Well, for those who weren’t aware I recently purchased an iPod mini. I’ve held myself distant from this phenomenon (okay, so there were cashflow problems – at 26 I’m still a student by any other name until I pass my professional final exams this autumn).

However after a few months holding back from my usual excess of indulging my basic need to read (a surprisingly expensive activity) I scrapped together the 250 Euros need to purchase the featherweight iPod Mini.

Out with the CD player and the MiniDisc Player I picked up two years ago then (my sister just finishing her Leaving Cert. exams seemed quite happy to take it off my hands for free ;-)). The first thing I noted was the severe inability to fill up the 6GB of space the iPod Mini provides. I find myself wondering how to transfer my older tape collection…hmmm. Most of my older CDs are still at my old house probably cowering beneath mothballs, I’ll dig around for them next week. No I do not have vinyls – I’m not THAT old.

I still take an unusual glee at downloading albums from iTunes. For those who don’t know, an album here in Ireland is sold at the maximum possible price (or so it appears) usually around 20-25 Euros. This is the result of living in a water locked island where everyone is in a cartel of some sort, upping their prices since there’s no alternative unless you take the Ferry across to the UK! On iTunes the same albums sell for about $12 – pennies compared to what would normally be paid. Beautiful…;-)

So far I have little to complain about – the iPod Mini has a decent battery life though I’m vaguely concerned about the overall battery lifetime and that $99 dollar charge for replacement if the battery fails over time. It sounds a little nuts – unfortunately the battery is not easily repalceable – though somewhere on the net there must be some tutorial on this. It’s some time into the future though before I need worry about that.

One complaint would be the total lack of accessories packaged with the iPod Mini. It came with only a USB cable – a non-standard one at that. No AC charger was included either. I guess these methods of trying to make even more money per iPod make sense to Apple – smart asses.

Still, I’m happy with it so far…:-)

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