Apple iPod classic 80 GB Black (6th Generation) OLD MODEL
by Apple Computer
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Our Price: $294.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $109.00 (click here) Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Apple iPod classic 80 GB Black (6th Generation) OLD MODEL
Customer Review: The New Firmware seems to have ironed out A LOT of the bugs others have talked about!
Summary: 4 Stars
**Before you read some of the negative reviews, please consider this was BEFORE the new firmware update 1.0.3 came out so unfortunately they had unresponsive clickwheels, itunes messing up etc. Also some people simply did NOT upgrade their firmware for whatever reason but A LOT of those problems have been fixed with the new firmware so UPGRADE YOUR FIRMWARE AS SOON AS YOU GET YOUR IPOD! It will make a BIG difference!**
Ok, on to the review..I just got my 80 gb ipod classic recently with a 3 year extended service plan, immediately got itunes version 7.5 and upgraded the firmware immediately to 1.0.3 which seems to have taken care of A LOT of bugs people have been reporting. It must have because I am not getting ANY of the problems other have reported such as laggy clickwheel, itunes freezing etc. The clickwheel is VERY responsive, only a light touch is needed and scrolling through cover art was very quick! No problems whatsoever with the clickwheel. I also have had no problems copying files to itunes and transferring them to my ipod. The ipod itself is a thing of beauty, love the non scratchable surface but the back of the ipod is where you can see all the fingerprints etc so get a good cover for it. The slimness of it is very sleek and heck this ipod just looks cool. I got the ipod up and running in no time after I transferred my music over. Love the search feature as well. There is a lot of features, settings and extra's. Heck I even like the clock.
PLEASE NOTE:TURN OFF & DON'T use the EQ (equalizer setting)if you want normal distortion free sound. I was using the EQ and wondered why a lot of my songs had distortion. I thought it was due to the bad sound everyone was talking about until I turned OFF the EQ. Upon turning the EQ off, the distortion vanished completely, the sound was just fine, pretty good in fact. It's a shame that you have to turn off the EQ settings to get good sound. Hopefully Apple will fix this with a firmware update.
I almost got one of the itouch ipods but the very limited space is what kept me from doing so. 80 gb is plenty of space for my music, a bit of videos etc. It might not have wifi or a touch screen but it's got tons of space for my music and that's what counts! I love my ipod classic, can't find much to be picky about except for the sound when EQ is enabled. It does exactly what it's supposed to, is easy to navigate, videos look crisp/great on it and most of all it holds a crapload of music. Just remember to upgrade your firmware to the newest version, disable EQ and invest in a good pair of headphones. One of the best things about the ipod classic is that because it has so much space, I don't have to worry about how many mp3's I put on it. I've never downloaded so many mp3's in my life! I literally put my entire collection of mp3's on it and still have tons of space left. Overall, I rate the ipod classic 80 gb (black)...absolutely superb.
Customer Review: One of the best purchase choices I've ever made!
Summary: 5 Stars
What started out as a spontaneous purchase choice has turned out to be one of the best buys I've made in a long time! I had not planned on replacing my 5th generation unit until my Apple Care Protection Plan expired. However, when it was accidentally dropped in my parking lot at work and then run over, I was forced to make a sudden upgrade. I was a little hesitant in investing in another Apple product because of all the problems I had been having with my previous two. Yes, that's right I said two! I had only owned my first iPod for about two months before it started to freeze up on me. So when I took it into my local Apple Store then gave me a refurbished player and the problems seemed to get worse. In fact, the very day my previous iPod got destroyed, I was actually planning on getting it checked out to see what they could do for me. But enough about my previous iPod, lets get to the new one.
For starters, I'm extremely pleased that Apple discontinued making iPods that have less then 80 GBs of hard drive space. The reason I say this, is I happened to have a rather large music and video collection. So the benefits of this extra space are endless for me. Another thing I really love is the design. This until holds 50 GBs more space then my last iPod and it's twice as small. This makes it beyond convenient for me to haul it around and just stick it in my pocket. I also love the 2.5 inch screen. Like I had mentioned before, I love watching videos on my iPod and this way I do not have to lug my laptop with me where ever I go. I also own conversion software that can change any video I have in my collection to an MPEG format. This is a nice feature for my video collection and my wallet. The one thing that makes this unit stand out from any of the other previous iPod models is the battery life! I can not tell you how wonderful this is for me because I constantly fall asleep while listening to my iPod. But the most noticeable upgrade for any Apple user is the software changes and the touch wheel. The new GUI that is implemented on my unit is definitely eye catching and easy. And the touch wheel is even better then my last unit.
There is really only one thing I would change about the new iPod and that's the GUI. I'm one of the few that does not like the split screen menu with my artwork changing in the background. I'd rather have that as a screen saver option then integrated in the menu. I also believe that the cover flow is a pointless option to have. I have never used it and probably never will. And my last gripe is the screensaver that pops up after you've been listening to your iPod for a while. I would prefer to see what I'm listening to. Call it a control issue if you'd like, but it's just plain annoying.
Over all I really love my new player and wouldn't change it for the world. Goes to show that spontaneity can be a good thing!
Customer Review: iPod Classic Review
Summary: 4 Stars
The iPod Classic is a mobile music player. The objective of the iPod is to offer reasonable sound and video at a reasonable price. That said, Apple has taken steps to make as many features available as possible while still keeping the price-point low. Many negative reviews are from techs who look at the new iPod Classic and see an inferior audio chip and a few other things compared to previous versions. This is true, but ask how many of the techs actually used the chips to the fullest capacity and I bet the answer will be very few. If you are one of the few people who listen to the iPod with a pair of 150 dollar headphones and rip your compact disks at 320 kbps, you will notice an unnatural bass and treble response with the "new" chip. If you buy iTunes store music at the 128-192 kbps compression rate, or rip your compact disks without changing anything in iTunes, then your music will sound almost identical to the 5.5 gen iPod Video even with expensive headphones. Apple has looked at this reality of so few people ripping to 320 kbps, at least for the time being, and has decided to invest your 349.99 in the iPod on a new graphical experience and bigger hard drive rather than a really nice audio chip (Think BMW vs. Ford on the audio chip). A complaint from techs is that the iPod Classic also has no TV out. The iPod Classic has TV out if you have the right cords: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300233 . The iPod Classic still smudges with fingerprints very easily, and still has no power adapter in the box (you must charge the iPod from your computer). Why Apple still has little support for open source video like an XVID codec onboard the iPod, or an easy converter in iTunes is beyond me. I would love to take some family videos with me sometimes, but I just grab my laptop so I do not have to wait on a two hour video conversion process to put the videos on my iPod. iTunes is still proprietary, and I would love to see the iPod have a hard disk indexing system like spotlight that would allow dragging and dropping so I could use Finder or Windows Explorer to move files around and put them in the folders I thought made since (Think external hard drive with an interface on the go). If you have no idea what these last two comments are, that is okay. The iPod Classic is still an iPod. Better alternatives do exist. You pay more for these alternatives and they are not as pretty or light as the iPod Classic. You should check out such companies like Archos and Creative before you purchase this though. Creative has years and years of audio experience, and Archos is doing some pretty neat stuff. Four stars for a product that does what the majority wants. Minus one star because Apple has yet to give the iPod the computer based support needed to allow consumers to use the iPod to its fullest potential, and because a wall charger is no longer included.Customer Review: All my music, all my Mythbusters, all my movies, still 16gb!
Summary: 5 Stars
My 80gb classic has been great. I have over 6 DAYS of video on it and all of my music and it still has about 16gb to go. When it was about 3 months old, the drive hit 40gb and refused to go any further, not one MB. I took it to the apple store, they reformatted it, still the same problem. Took it back again, they replaced it. Flawless ever since. I use a JBL mini on stage with this and it works great. I have a pelican hard case for it and it has kept it in absolute pristine condition. I made an adapter with a couple of radio shack parts that allows my ipod to run off of an Energizer portable DVD player battery and charge off of it as well. I recharged the ipod 5 times off of the DVD battery and it's charge indicator NEVER WENT DOWN. I would have chewed my own head off to escape while stuck in an airport for 10 hours were it not for this device. I really cannot say enough nice things about it. I would also recommend the following to make the most of this Ipod.
1. Get Magic DVD Ripper. It will convert any movie to MP4 for your ipod.
2. Get the Pelican Hard case. Indestructable and water tight. You can listen to it while the case is sealed through an external jack.
3. The JBL mini on stage will let you play music and video without earphones, great for when you just want background music or sound while working.
4. Get a good set of noise cancelling headphones. You won't believe how much nicer they sound than the earbuds and how much nicer a flight or car trip is with them.
5. Go to Radio shack. Get a female power jack in the electronic parts department. Get a female cigarette lighter socket. Solder the socket to the female power jack (make sure you have the polarity right!!!) Get an Ipod cigarette lighter plug. Plug your portable DVD player battery into the female power jack (you have several options to buy, match them with the plugs that come with the DVD battery). Plug the ipod cord into the cigarette lighter plug and into the ipod. Even though my DVD battery is 9.6 volts, the ipod will still charge from it and run off of it, for days if necessary. This may seem like a lot of fuss, but when you are far from outlets and vehicles as I often am, it will allow you to be completely self contained for a very long time. There is little that I hate more than boredom, and this has spared me from it.
6. It comes with the games Klondike, Vortex and I-quiz. I have added Tetris and Bejwelled 2 and love them.
I am currently experimenting with a pair of virtual reality glasses and will let you know how they along with this ipod work out. I think that with the two combined, I will have a tremendous entertainment system that fits into a small pelican case.
This is without question the best gizmo I have ever bought.
Customer Review: One very pleased customer.
Summary: 5 Stars
I have owned the Apple iPod classic 80 GB Black (6th Generation) for three months by now and I have no problems or disappoints with it. I bought it to replace my 30 Gig iPod Video, which I had for three years. I had no problems with it, either. I simply wanted the upgrade and sold my old one to a friend.
My new iPod Classic's external functions are the same as my old one. The updated internal software is impressive, though, with the new cover flow and the way it displays the files in general. Plus, on my old 30 Gig iPod, when I would scroll through its files while music was playing, there was some lag; but not with the new Classic. Now, when I scroll through my various files as music plays, I've noticed no lag.
Some reviews here have reported about some lag in the software when scrolling through the cover flow, but I've noticed none. Some reviews also reported that the click wheel was not as sensitive as what they would like. Again, I haven't noticed any problem being able to use the scroll wheel. Remember that these iPods are miniature computers. Computers actually do have the ability to learn. The longer you use one, the more accustomed it becomes to it's user until all of the user's habitual activities become ingrained into the very way the computer functions.
The battery life is incredible on the Classic. I've heard of people complaining that their iPods were only lasting roughly 4 years until the battery just quits. The biggest way to deplete a rechargeable battery (which iPods are obviously powered by) is to keep it plugged in all the time. If people would just let the battery get very near to empty each time before they recharge it, they'll be amazed at how long the batteries are actually intended to last (much longer than only 3 years). In a nut shell, just treat the battery well by not leaving the iPod plugged into the computer all the time; that'll deplete it faster than anything. Remember they're rechargeable, not continuously-chargeable.
Lastly, if people would simply treat the iPod with care and not bang it around or drop the thing like so many people drop their cell phones a dozen times a day, they'll find that their iPod will last a lot longer. Again, they're miniature computers, not something simple, like jump drives; they're more complex and have moving parts inside. Too much banging around will eventually knock something loose inside and likely kill the iPod's ability to function like it's designed to.
All in all, I highly recommend the new iPod classics if someone is looking for an mp3 player with tons of file space to store their media.