Well, it's charged and cranking away. One thing that is somewhat misleading in promo copy is the "connect to a USB port." Sure, it works fine but a USB 2 is suggested. On the plain USB on my Quicksilver 800, it took 5 minutes to load in about 70 megs of music. It also charges faster on USB2.
After loading on a number of music files, you can add more to what you have stored or you can replace them all with a new playlist. I think it will also fill the drive with a random selection of whatever mp3 files you have on your disk, but I haven't tried that feature yet either. Another bit of good news that I don't recall seeing in the promo copy is that the Shuffle can also work as a USB drive. The preferences allow you to convert part of the memory for use with files. As to the sound, WOW! The sound is unbelievable. And it cranks up very nicely. The "click-wheel" makes witching from track to track quick and easy. Holding down the forward and reverse buttons lets you fast forward and preview the track. Same with reverse. I haven't used the random setting yet. Now, for what I see as the downsides: 1. The lanyard that comes with it has another cap/cover for the USB plug, so you have to remove the regular cap. Now, where did that cap go...? 2. Because of the lanyard and the way the Shuffle just clips on and hangs there, I forsee a blight of "pod-napping" in the not too distant future. It would be very easy in a crowd to reach out, grab it and run the other direction. 3. The earbuds are large, uncomfortable and come out too easily (see #2). But switching to a headset from an old Walkman helps with that problem. There are also bunches of third-party headsets available. I'm sure someone will bring up the fact that there's no screen and no control for editing or viewing the playlist on the Shuffle, but what the hell. It's a small price to pay. Suffice it to say, it was worth risking my life driving on Dixie Hiway to get it. rob Rob Kersting wrote: > Well, I got my iPod Shuffle last nite. > > It's currently charging and I'm importing audio, so I really can't > report much in the way of performance. | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be February 22. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
