40gb iPod

If there’s one product that has become a cultural phenomenon all on its own, it’s the 40gb iPod, and really any size iPod for that matter. Nowadays, the iPod is almost synonymous with mp3 players, and although most people think that they’re the only mp3 player in existence, there are actually other companies that manufacture them as well. The only thing is Apple has grabbed so much of the average consumer’s attention (and so much market share) that even non-Apple mp3 products are referred to as “iPods” by the more…er…non-discriminating consumers. As far as the 40gb iPod is concerned, for those who may not be fully aware of what “gigabytes” means, gigabytes refers to how much space the iPod has available for the storage of music files (mp3’s normally), audio book files (also of the mp3 flavor), and it can even be used as an “external storage drive”, to where you can upload files such as Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, and any other types of files that you may need to carry with you and be able to download onto another computer via the USB cable that comes with the iPod. According to Apple’s own website, the 40gb iPod has enough space (or gigabytes) available to hold up to 10,000 CD-quality songs. That’s a heckuva lot of tunes going on. At an average of 4 minutes per song, we’re talking 40,000 minutes worth of “tunage”—which translated into hours is about 666 hours’ worth of music…this means that if you listened to an entire 40gb iPod’s worth of songs consecutively, without stopping, it would take you about 28 days straight to listen to all of the songs on the iPod, and that’s doing nothing but listening to songs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! It seems almost inconceivable that a human being would even need that much music in their life, but we’re definitely in the sight-and-sound generation, and excess is the order of the day. Plus, for any music lover out there, enough is never enough when it comes to collecting and listening to your favorite songs. One of the most useful features is the click-wheel, where you can establish other settings that tickle your fancy, such as if you want to place it on “shuffle” and surprise yourself with a random playlist. It’s cool because it keeps you “on your toes”, so to speak, and you may have quite a few pleasant surprises, especially how even though it’s moving at random, the song selection of the shuffle feature can be uncanny as far as the flow is concerned.

The battery life is impressive, as you can listen to up to 12 hours worth of songs on a single charge—not bad at all. I know that there are more sophisticated iPods out there now with greater battery performance, but for those of us who would like a more economical iPod that still has excellent performance, the 40gb iPod is the way to go. Yes, there will always be bigger and badder, but hey, you can snatch one up for fairly cheap now on websites such as eBay or Amazon.com. One note about the battery on the 40gb iPod: It is a NiMH battery, and with this type of battery you don’t have to worry about damaging it if you let it drain completely out until it’s dead. You actually can preserve the life of the battery better this way than if you wait until it’s halfway charged and keep charging it again over and over. In the “old school days” of less sophisticated batteries (such as the NiCad batteries), this was the thing to do, but NiMH batteries actually perform better when you charge them less frequently and make sure that you have allowed the battery to drain completely before recharging. That’s a tip from the iPod user manual, so I believe it would be a good idea to follow their advice. One thing to keep in mind as well is to make sure and get a carrying case for your 40gb iPod—all of us have played “Superman” before where we actually thought that we would always be careful enough to never drop our cell phones or mp3 players, but in reality, we’re often not as cognizant of this as we need to be. So then, through one random act of distraction or just simply not paying attention, we drop the thing and now we’re stuck with a malfunctioning piece of equipment. Not a good thing at all. So factor in a carrying case as well when purchasing your iPod. Another tip: Make sure that you get the 40gb iPod that has the manufacturer number M9268LL/A (4th Generation)…many have reported that if you get a 40gb iPod with any other manufacturer number, you may not get the same amount of storage space for your music as is available with this one. Other features of the 40gb iPod include a calendar where you can set appointments and keep track of important dates, a contact management system with vCard support, games such as Solitaire, and also the ability to store text files such as to-do lists and recipes. All in all, the 40gb iPod, while it’s not the newest and the flashiest one around, it can definitely get the job done at a decent price.