CGarvey.ie - The personal website of Cathal Garvey

So I pressied myself with an iPod Photo a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I am impressed. The click wheel can scroll through hundreds of photos in a second or two, which is the most impressive navigation I’ve seen on small devices. There are lots of cool things about it, but you’ll have read that elsewhere no doubt.

The Good™:

• Light, and small (for what you’re getting)
• Impressive UI, with simple navigation
• All the space you (or I anyway!) could ever need for your personal music collection and photo collection
• Ability to slideshow the photos on T.V. (this is a huge plus.. especially when visiting less technically-minded friends and family
• iTunes, dynamic playlists, simple sync
• The dock!

There are a couple of quirks, and bugs, and things. We all hear about the battery problem, but is it really that bad? Or, rather, is there anything out there that’s better? My iPod will be out of warranty by then anyway, so I’ll probably be replacing the battery with a 3^rd party one then anyway. If you’re not brave (stupid?) enough, there is the battery replacement program.. but it is expensive.

The Bad™

• Proprietary battery
• No OGG support, or other music formats
• Very slow to sync 40GB of music and photos
• No iTunes store in Ireland yet
• Expensive !!

I was pleasantly surprised when I found two pouches for the iPod in the case (the 40GB iPod I had previously didn’t come with those. I bought a whole platter of accessories (more later) for it at the time. All in all, I’m happy so far .. and once I get a proper link to my car stereo, I’ll be thrilled