Macopinion

The Road Warrior Review - Apple Certified Refurbished iPod nano 2GB

I'm becoming a big fan of Apple Certified Refurbished products. Eighteen months ago, I purchased an ACR 17" PowerBook G4, which has proved to be a flawless performer as my number one production machine since then. Last fall we bought my daughter an ACR iPod mini, which has likewise been a completely satisfactory purchase, so a few weeks ago when I wanted to buy my wife an iPod for her birthday, my first shopping stop was The Apple Store's Refurbished iPod page, where I found Certified Refurbished silver iPod nano 2 GB units offered for a friendly $99, or CAN$105 - a very decent discount off the new price of US$149.00 for this model. I stopped shopping and ordered one.



Although I ordered from the Apple Canada online Apple Store, the unit was shipped from California, and delivered to my door for free, which made the purchase experience convenient and painless.

The nano came in Apple's no-frills plain brown cardboard ACR packaging, and when opened was indistinguishable from a new unit, wrapped in plastic protective film with no cosmetic flaws and the packet of cables, etc. presumably brand new as well.
Having never bought a new iPod, I had no frame of reference to compare the ACR packaging first-hand with the fancier new product box, but there was certainly nothing to complain about.

Included were a set of Apple earbuds, a USB connector cable, an iPod dock adapter, and a very minimal quick start sheet of instructions, as well as even a couple of white Apple logo decals. Nothing second-class about it so long as you don't mind the brown cardboard box.

The little nano worked just fine too. The bright little 1.5" color display is very bright and attractive compared with the monochrome display in my old 1st Gen 5 GB iPod, and the size difference between the two machines is so striking, it's almost amusing. The original iPod seemed amazingly small for what it did back in 2001, but the nano at 3.5" x 1.6" x 0.26" and featherweight 1.41 ounce heft is in a whole 'nother dimension of compactness.

That makes it extremely convenient to carry, and I'm always fascinated by miniature devices. However the downside is that bright and sharp though it is, that nano color display is pretty tiny, especially for displaying pictures.

I also find the nano's proportionately sized skin capacitance actuated control console awkwardly small. I would probably get used to it, but I have to say that I'm partial to the big (?) ol' mechanical clickwheel and control buttons on my dinosaur iPod.

On the other hand, I'm convinced already that solid state flash memory makes particularly good sense in an iPod. With my old 'Pod, I'm always uneasily conscious that there is a mechanical hard drive spinning inside when the unit is operating, with the inevitability of normal wear and the potential for a head crash. The nano, conversely, feels reassuringly solid, as it of course is with its anodized aluminum case and NAND flash memory with no internal moving parts.

This nano has less than half the capacity of even my old 5-Gig unit, but I don't anticipate that my wife will run out of space anytime soon. I loaded up her favorite (mostly classical) albums and used up less than three-quarters of the 2 GB capacity. Indeed, I still have about a gig and a half of free space left on my iPod's 5 GB HD. Photo storage would of course burn up storage space fast, but I don't see the nano as being especially well-suited as a slideshow machine anyway.

And if you want more storage capacity with the nano's tiny form factor and solid state memory, up to 8 GB is available, for $249.00, which is still less than half what my 5 GB 'Pod sold for back in '01.

The nano's battery charges very quickly (Apple says it charges to 80 percent capacity in just an hour and a half), and up to 24 hours of battery life is claimed.

I found setting up the iPod (I wanted to present it to my wife loaded up with her favorite music and ready to go out of the box) slick and easy, at least after I got past the roadblock of iTunes compatibility. I had been happily getting along with iTunes 4, which supports my old iPod just fine, but the nano requires iTunes 7 or later. Bummer. As regular The Road Warrior readers may recall, I'm stuck with a very slow (26,400 bps throughput on good days) rural dialup connection, and iTunes 7.0.3 is a 34 MB download.... which crapped out when it was about three-quarters completed (about 5 hours in). Sigh.

Then it dawned on me that a friend had included a copy of the iTunes 7.0 installer on a burned CD with one of the OS 10.4 updates he'd mailed me a while back, so I was in business in a few minutes once I twigged to that.

An aside; I'm not that smitten with iTunes 7. It works fine with both iPods, but seems to have lost the capability of playing my MIDI file collection which worked just fine with iTunes 4. Uber-bummer.

I do miss FireWire connectivity. I understand the reasons why Apple has dropped FireWire support on the iPod, but I still consider it superior to USB 2.0. Incidentally, while the iPod nano doesn't officially support USB 1.1, the unit will charge from a USB 1.1 port, and can transfer files that way as well, albeit very slowly.

Anyway, my wife is delighted with her new iPod, and I'm a bit envious, although my old 'Pod still serves my requirements satisfactorily. When I do get around to replacing it, will I go with a nano? I'm still on the fence about that. I love the compactness and just plain coolness of the nano form factor, and I expect I would get used to the undersized controls. I like the flash memory too except for the limited capacity. Not a problem for music for my purposes, but having my photo collection on an iPod appeals, and I would want a bigger display and larger than 8GB storage capacity for that purpose.

Whichever way I go, I'm pretty sure it will be an Apple Certified Refurbished unit.

If you're not familiar with Apple's Certified Refurbished products, here are the broad strokes. Apple Certified Refurbished Products are pre-owned Apple products that undergo Apple's stringent refurbishment process prior to being offered for sale. These products have been returned under Apple's Return and Refund Policies. While only some units are returned due to technical issues, all units undergo the full quality refurbishment process.

Each Apple Certified Refurbished Product:

* is fully tested (including full burn-in testing).
* is refurbished with replacement parts for any defective modules identified in testing.
* is put through a thorough cleaning process and inspection.
* is repackaged (including appropriate manuals, cables, new boxes, etc.).
* includes the operating software originally shipped with the unit and the custom software offered with that system. See each products "Learn More" for more details.
* is given a new refurbished part number and serial number.
* is placed into a Final QA inspection prior to being added to sellable refurbished stock.

Refurbishment procedures follow the same basic technical guidelines as Apple's Finished Goods testing procedures, and ACR Products are covered by the same 12-month Apple warranty that applies to new Apple products, and are also eligible for extended AppleCare coverage up to two years from purchase (three years for Mac products).

iPod nano System requirements:
• USB 2.0 port
• Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later
• iTunes 7
• Internet connection

Product Details

• Model Refurbished iPod nano


• Storage and song capacity 2GB (500 songs)


• Battery life Up to 24 hours of music playback; up to 5 hours of slideshows with music


• Display 1.5-inch (diagonal) color LCD with LED backlight


• Ports Dock connector, stereo minijack


• Connectivity USB through dock connector


• Charge time About 3 hours (1.5-hour fast charge to 80% capacity)


• Audio support AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3 and 4), Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF


• Photo support Syncs iPod-viewable photos in JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PSD (Mac only) and PNG formats


• Size (in inches) 3.5 x 1.6 x 0.26 inches


• Weight 1.41 ounces


• Included accessories Earphones, USB cable, dock adapter

For more information, visit:
http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/



***



cmoore@macopinion.com


Provisionally, you can access The Road Warrior Archive to Jan. 16, 2006 by clicking here.

Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in The Road Warrior Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

CM