I am holding in my hand a brand-new iPod nano, and all I can say is … oh boy.
I need this. After I write this column, I’m going to eBay to sell my old iPod mini, which I thought would always be my music player of choice.
The iPod nano is the slickest of the already-slick iPod model lineup. The pictures don’t do it justice.
It is so slim – about the width of a No. 2 pencil.
And the nano comes in two versions. The $199 2GB model holds about 500 4-minute songs. The $249 4GB model holds about 1,000 songs of the same length.
In practice, though, many songs are much longer, and as I loaded my 4GB nano, I was only able to get about 800 songs.
Like the $99 shuffle introduced earlier this year, the nano does not use a hard drive, as the other models do. It uses what is called flash memory, storing the data on a microchip. That’s how it can be so amazingly compact.
Unlike the shuffle, the nano has the familiar click-wheel navigation control that lets you chose songs.
And it also has – like the more expensive iPods – a bright color display that not only lists the song and title but displays album art.
It is as full-featured as any iPod. You can download photos to it if you want to use some of your memory that way, or load it with podcasts that, like music, can be installed from the iTunes Music Store site. You can also install your own CDs onto the iPod.
That said, there is one disappointment.
The nano, which works with both Macs and Windows-based PCs, connects to the user’s computer by a USB 2.0 port instead of having the option to use the much faster FireWire connections available on most computers.
That means that it takes longer to get those songs moved from the PC to the iPod.
To transfer over those 800 songs when I set up my nano took almost 16 minutes.
The sound from the nano is as full and crisp and powerful as any other iPod.
Battery life is advertised at about 14 hours. I haven’t had mine long enough to verify that, but after about six hours of play, the battery still reads a tad over half full.
There are a couple of other new features with the nano that make the device even more useful. A built- in stopwatch will be much appreciated by those who use the nano during exercise.
And there’s a locking feature that you can activate that turns the screen into a combination lock so other people can’t activate the device.
With the nano comes iTunes 5, a software update that offers a streamlined look and feel to the computer interface. The update will especially be appreciated by Windows users as it allows them to seamlessly sync their Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express contacts and calendar to the player – something Mac users have been able to do for some time with their Mac Mail and Address Book.
The nano is available at Apple stores, select dealers and online (www.apple.com).
I have to run. Time to sell my mini. I’m now a nano man.
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AP-NY-09-28-05 0624EDT
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