iPod!

Last Friday at work, we had a Halloween party where everybody wearing a costume received a raffle ticket for some fabulous prizes. If you must know, I was an Oakland A's player. I wore my A's jersey, A's hat, baseball socks, cleats, cheap flip-up sunglasses and I put that fun, black, sun-reflecting stuff under my eyes. They had some real nice prizes like a digital camera, DVD player, and best of all, an iPod. I mouthed off all morning to people that I was going to win the iPod and here's what they said: "Yeah, yeah, yeah". Fast forward to the raffle. The vampire won the digital camera. The pimp won the DVD player. And, I won the iPod!

You may be asking yourself, what's an iPod? I think Tim may have wrote about it earlier, but an iPod is a portable music player, with a miniature hard-disk which allows the iPod to contain literally thousands of songs. You use a cable to plug the iPod to the computer and then download the songs. I could probably fit my whole CD collection on my iPod, which is smaller than a Sony Walkman.

What's great about it

• It looks very cool.
  
• It has a fun user interface, no buttons, all fingertip sensing controls.
  
• Can hold thousands of songs and has the ability to randomly play one song after another.
  
• Not only is it portable like a Walkman, but also can be hooked up to computers (I listen to my iPod on my work computer) and using a special FM transmitter, to the car stereo
  
• Works seamlessly with iTunes. iTunes is a music service from Apple where you can download whole albums or even better, individual songs for $0.99 each. I like some Meat Loaf songs, but not enough to buy the whole album. Last night, I bought "Two out of Three Ain't Bad" for 99 cents. It's fun to just browse through iTunes and remember a lot of songs from my youth (you know, the 70s and 80s!).
  

What I don't like so much

• It's a bit pricey. The version I won cost $399 at a local electronics shop. I'm sure the price will come down over time.
  
• It has a rechargable battery but the charge doesn't quite last all day, especially when using the shuffle mode. But still acceptable.