new toy

[cellio]

I've entered the 21st century: I now have an iPod (nano), a birthday present from Dani. This was totally unexpected; I haven't had portable music since way back when I had a Walkman (TM). But I'd been lamenting the hassle of moving CDs between the home and the car (the one you want is always in the wrong place), and this solves that. Dani also got me an interface between the iPod and the car stereo; it broadcasts via FM, raising questions (not answered in the documentation) about signal distance. Can I end up in conflict with the guy behind me at the traffic light? Time may tell, nor not. (Neither Dani nor I is really an earbud kind of person.)

The itty bitty iPod comes with an itty bitty manual. Fortunately (I suppose), also a short one. (I read it with a magnifying glass.)

The UI seems a little jumpy, and I do hope there's a global switch so that turning it on requires intentional action. As it is, just brushing the face sometimes turns it on, which can't be good for battery life.

I haven't used iTunes before, and parts of the interface are (deliberately?) counter-intuitive for Windows, but I think I've got the gist of it. So far I'm just working at the album level; I haven't created playlists. I assume that eventually I'll have too much music in iTunes for the iPod and I'll need to select what to put on the iPod, but I've only scanned about half a dozen CDs so far so that's not an issue yet.

Cool toy!

Comments

[geekosaur]

Basically, being Part 49 (unlicensed) transmitters, those little FM transmitters have a very limited range — and since the body of a car (if it's not all plastic, at least) makes a pretty good Faraday cage, there's essentially no signal outside the car. This also means that they can easily be overwhelmed by real transmitters; there's one patch of 279N that I found to be completely hopeless with the one I used to use (restricted choice of frequencies; some others let you use the whole FM range, which would have helped).

[cellio]

Thanks. The one I have gives access to the whole FM band, not just presets, which helps. (That said, the display is very hard to read, so there's strong incentive to not fiddle with it too much.)