beware ipod

IMO, the ideal situation is to manage all of one's music files on an external hard drive. These days, you can get a lot of storage for relatively little $$. This way, you don't take up your computer's hard drive with music files. Then, you circulate your music through your ipod from your external hard drive. You burn CD's with your computer using your external hard drive. To me, asking your ipod to manage all of that, or being disappointed because you can't do all of that from your ipod is a little unrealistic. Before the 40 Gig ipod, I was carrying around a notebook computer so I could carry that much music. The ipod conveniently separates the portable music capability so I
don't have to carry around a full fledged computer. For me, a portable hard dive player like the ipod is the Holy Grail -- it is THE solution. To have THAT much music THAT portable, to be able to plug my ipod into my home stereo,
take it with me and plug it into my car stereo, then take it out of the car and listen to it at the beach or on an airplane makes the ipod THE answer. Carrying around a notebook computer, which was the alternative, was way more costly, way less convenient. As I said in an earlier post, there *are* hard drive solutions for the home -- like the Escient Fireball -- which cost far more than an ipod -- and are not portable. There are hard drive solutions for the car -- Sony makes one -- which cost a lot more than an ipod and have a lot less storage -- and are not portable. And, neither of those solutions are nearly as easy to load as the ipod. Then, you've got car stereo manufacturers like Alpine coming up with products that will let you plug your ipod directly into your car's audio system. And a 40 Gig ipod only costs around $500. To me, that's a hell of a deal. Of course, if you get a lemon, that's not a deal at any price, but my guess is that Apple will replace it and then, like others have said, for people to avoid the ipod with all of it's convenience, portability, and efficiency at such a reasonable price, because of one bad experience, would be a shame.

I'm on my 3rd 30GB ipod. This one's working well though. When they work they're great, when they don't... Sounds like you're using USB 1.1 if it's taking you that long to load music onto your ipod. Get a USB 2 card or FireWire and your life will get much easier.

Also, the ipod is advertised as an mp3 player which is also capable of playing wavs. However, you cannot expect to get the advertised battery life when playing wavs. The ipod has a 32mb buffer I believe. This is adequate for mp3's, but not large enough for wavs. Because of this your hard drive will constantly be spinning up to read and your battery life will plummet. This is not unique to the ipod. I don't know of another HD player with a larger buffer so all players will suffer the same result (although most players do have better battery life than the ipod to begin with). I highly recommend alt-preset-standard VBR mp3's made with EAC and LAME mp3 decoder. On an ipod, there is absolutely no sound difference (this is with Senn 600's and ety's).

Hey ultraviolet thanks for the info on the wav's...that makes a heck of a lot of sense...basically the ipod is not up for heavy duty wav playback which means that I am likely going to run into the same problem when I get my replacement...I am still waiting...the only reason I bought it was for .wav files....I have zero interest in compression schemes since I have a hard enough time listening to CD's...you are probably correct that using hi rez mp3's I wouldn't notice the difference with earbuds...but I would in my car and certainly hooked up to my home rig...all the folks that love the ipod do so because of the convenience of all that music in a nifty little package...I guess I just expected too much from the little plastic box...I guess that is why no legitimate consumer electronics company has jumped into the "ipod" business...sony only offers a 1 gig flash player and mini disc...they are wise because they value their brand more than apple does...or as I mentioned before, computer companies seem to be able to get away with selling ill conceived "dream" products and consumers seem not to care when they don't perform as advertised...apple shouldn't sell the ipod as working with .wav files unless it does so with some degree of reliability...I am considering using an outboard drive to store and access all my CD's though...are the LaCie's any good?...they have some that go up to a terabyte...maybe too good to be true huh?
thanks for all the replies though...audiogoner's are a first rate bunch...

Ntscdan I use Apple's AAC compression for my music and the Lanstec inmotion speaker system which is a portable speaker set.

I bought some Senheiser ear phones too to replace the iPod ones;for listening via headphones imho the iPod sounds very very good,occassionally the odd track can be a bit off on overall sound but for music on the move it's a fantastic little machine.

The Inmotion speaker set are a dinky little piece and great for a casual system,I use mine mostly in the kitchen and again for the cash paid the sound quality is pretty decent with reasonable power.

However I have plugged myiPod into my main system at home and as you might expect with the compression etc. it's rather poor.
I'm not disappointed by that because it's not what I bought the iPod for BUT audiophilles should be aware it is not an audiophille machine but it is imho a piece of equipment that makes music exciting again which is a major triumph in itself.

Ntscdan, your statement that "basically the ipod is not up for heavy duty wav playback" is not true. The type of hard drive used in the iPod is a common typed used in numerous laptop applications. Using WAV or AIFF format files will increase the number of times the hard drive in the iPod is accessed which in turn will decrease battery life, but it has a negligible effect on the hard drive's durability. I have a 30Gb iPod and have used it with both compressed and uncompressed files without any problems.

I agree entirely with Ben Campbells above statement that the iPod is not an audiophile oriented product.