<p>My older S, the college bound one, would like an iPod for Xmas. The younger S, who is high school bound next year would probably like one also.</p>
<p>What’s the best one to get for all around usefulness and reasonable cost?</p>
<p>The way I see this right now … </p>
<p>iPod Nano 2g holds 500 songs for about $200 and is the latest and greatest.</p>
<p>The iPod 20G is a 4th generation machine (the photo/video/color screen things are 5th generation) and are currently going for about $229 when you shop them. </p>
<p>Is there really ‘podcasting’ on campus where it would make sense to have an iPod big enough to hold a few lectures?</p>
<p>What would you buy your kid?</p>
<p>BTW … if you order online for delivery, you can get them engraved! I think I’ll put their names, plus for S1 the name of his college and year. And for S2, my French and Latin scholar, his name plus a Latin quote. I am thinking of either “Maximum in minimus” or “Omnia mea mecum porto” since “musica delenit bestiam feran” won’t fit!</p>
<p>Can you still buy the 20G? I thought it wasn’t sold now that the newer ones were out (of course you could probably find it shopping around and all that). Personally, I don’t see the point of the nano. You’re only paying about $100 less for much less space and it’s so small I would lose it. If someone really likes music and has one that holds a decent amount they can store all their music on it for years, basically.
Also if you can order online through your child’s school. You don’t save much money – I think about $30 on the 5th generation ones – but it adds up.</p>
<p>go for the 20 gig. Odds are your son will have way more than 500 songs that he’ll want. Although i love the look of the new nano, i wouldnt give up my old school 40 gig for anything. </p>
<p>about podcasting - at my school, everybody has an ipod. You could pull a random person from a classroom and more likely than not they’ll have an ipod with them. Despite this, i have never seen one being used to record a lecture. I know it’s possible and i considered buying one for my ipod a while back, but if i was in class recording lectures, i would have looked like a huge dork, even on an ivy league campus. Leave it to the pen and notebook. Spend the extra $40 on an am/fm transmitter so he can play his ipod in the car (or buy the $100 dirrect connect device if you have an Alpine sound system in your car … it rocks!!!)</p>
<p>Our DD got an iPod Mini a couple of years ago and now wants one of the new iPods with video capability. The 30GB (7500 songs) is $299 and the 60GB (15,000 songs) is $399. Free shipping and free engraving available through the Apple online store. If you’re a school employee, ask about the discount.</p>
<p>I adore my new 30 GB. It’s more expensive, but if he loves music it’s definitely the way to go. They’re $299, which is the same price that the 20 GB was sold at until it was discontinued two months ago.</p>
<p>The Mac Store … or Mac Mall or someone like that sent me an email this morning with the 20G prominently featured for $229 … I was ready to buy the nano. So I got confused. So I thought I would ask the board (after I asked my teen and 20-something employees who couldn’t form a consensus either!)</p>
<p>So … that’s what I was thinking about. And they will engrave the 20G. </p>
<p>Of course, I got a iPod mini as a biz gift a few months ago and it makes my kids nuts that I haven’t started to use it yet. And NO they CANNOT have it!</p>
<p>Gomestar – thanks for the input on podcasting at Cornell. That’s actually where he’ll be next year.</p>
<p>Strolled into an apple store a few weeks ago with my experts, s1 and s2, in tow. went for the 30GB. the 60g is too big, the nano is too small…the 30GB is just right.</p>
<p>kids have downloaded 27K songs for me already, and kindly stepped me through ‘how to upload from a cd’. </p>
<p>the one rip off is that the ipod does not include a charger like the 20g ones did. it costs an extra $30 for the charger.</p>
<p>i wish him luck with first surviving admissions (ED results are out tomorrow, unless he found out via leaked link at the Cornell forum) then surviving the academics! Woo finals week!!!</p>
<p>I suggest taking $50 and buying the quality inner-ear sony headphones. They drown out the outside noise and fit snugly in your ear with superior sound quality. A fantastic investment. I somehow broke my pair so my ipod has been mostly idle ever since. No way am i lugging my big headphones around campus! I also suggest one of the iskin things to protect it from big scratches and so forth. It’s rubbery so it wont slip from you hands when grabbing it from your pocket (something i have seen happen around campus).</p>
<p>You can also buy refurbished ipods from the website, same 1 year apple full warranty and same ability to pay for another year. Since 2 or the 3 ipods in our family have been repaired under warranty (one twice) for hard drive issues, the refurbished sounds good and the extra year of warranty is something my kids chose to pay for (themselves!)</p>
<p>We just ordered an ipod for D from the Apple website. It was great. It arrived in 2 days (free shipping). In addition, if you order from the website, you get free engraved personalization. I was very impressed with their efficiency!</p>
<p>you can also get it throught the education website 30gb video ipod for $269
incidentally if you don’t buy through Apple- if you buy HP ipod- Apple store will not service them.
I also suggest to get the engraving ( easier to identify yours at the pawn shop) and when you get new headphones- which you will be cause the basic ones are not so comfortable- do not get white headphones that scream I have an ipod-</p>
<p>Best Buy sells an extended warantee that includes the battery. It’s one of the few extended warantees I would consider because of the short battery life and expense of replacing it. </p>
<p>For those that haven’t discovered it yet, you can upload from an Ipod to any computer, making it usable as an external disk drive or making it easier to migrate your music collection. All you have to do is ‘Unhide’ the folders on the Ipod and you can drag and drop files to and from the Ipod.</p>
<p>Momofthree, as they said above, the discount isn’t crazy great, so you probably didn’t really lose much. I bought my husband a nano right after they came out through U-M, and saved about $30.</p>
<p>I’ve got an iPod photo, which now feels like I’m hauling around a Sony Betamax.</p>
<p>As for podcasting, I noticed a confusing comment above. No one should expect to see someone “recording” a lecture in the classroom with one. They download the lecture later, from a website, and would be listening to it at other times.</p>