James first started this website when learning Visual Basic back in 1999 whilst studying his GCSEs. The site grew steadily over the years while being run as a hobby - to a regular monthly audience of over half a million unique developers. In July '08 James left his job as Head of Development at a digital agency in London to focus his energies on developerFusion full-time.
From the settings menu, you can choose whether to shuffle by song or album, use a preset equalizer setting such as Rock/Classical and adjust the backlight timer. A nice touch is the ability to customize the main menu - very useful if you want to add a frequently-used submenu to the main list. The iPod also includes a sleep function, contacts and notes (described later), alarm and timer backlight. Games include a music quiz (it will play a portion of one of your music files and you have to guess from a list which it is), brick, solitaire and parachute. The sleep function can be very useful especially when plugged into your Hi-Fi; both can then in theory turn off after a specified number of minutes.
The iPod with its backlight active
A dock connector at the rear of the iPod allows you to connect the device to your computer using either FireWire (800) or USB 2.0, both of which provide transfer rates of around 800Mbps (in case you're wondering, this is *fast* - on my machine, an album copies in less than 30 seconds). Sadly, Apple didn't see the need to include a USB 2 cable as standard - so if you want to use USB (or don't have firewire!) you have to purchase that seperately.
The iPod at home in its docking station...
The docking station itself (included on 20 and 40 GB models) is solid, but other than having somewhere safe to keep your 'Pod, the only extra functionality you gain is a line-out connection (which bypasses the iPod's own amplifier, providing better sound quality if you want to play music through your Hi-Fi). Likewise, the carrying case is simple but sturdy. You can't access the iPod controls when it is, but the inclusion of a wired remote - which allows you to stop, start, skip tracks and control the volume - means this isn't a problem.
The wired remote and earbud headphones
In the past, the iPod has been plagued with battery life problems - these seem to have been resolved with this iPod, although battery life remains short at an absolute maximum of 8 hours. Fortunately, an hours charge (either directly from the AC adapter, or whilst connected to a computer through a powered FireWire or USB connection) will restore its battery to around 80% capacity. Irritatingly, however, if you do reach the stage where it needs replacing, you will either have to return your iPod to Apple (or another 3rd party) to replace the battery, or take the risk of opening the sealed unit yourself and installing a replacement battery.
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