After unsuccessful try to buy it in USA (it was sold-out in Florida’s Millenia Apple Store), a friend bought it for me in Apple’s Regent Store in London UK. £99 for the 1GB version. Why so much trouble? Because it’s €180 in Belgrade. :s
I have it for as little over one day and so far impressions are excellent – exactly what I expected. I have left 764MB for disc use which left me with space for about 50–60 songs. Just enough for me; I’ll listen them for 2–3 days, then switch to another playlist. Then repeat. Then shuffle. And that disc size is perfect – I can backup entire CD on it plus it’s excellent for moving files from office to home and vice-versa.
Shuffle is “only” almost perfect, though. The slider-switch, for off/order play/shuffle play, should have two or three lines on it, for better grip when switching. As glide as it is, I need to really press on it to move the slider. And tiny as it is I fear I’m gonna break it that way.
The sound is good and can be loud enough to subvert the noise of Belgrade traffic. Friend who few days ago received Creative MuVo says that Shuffle’s sound quality is good, but slightly inferior to MuVo’s. Can’t really tell – I was never an audiophile that can tell such differences. It’s just right for me.
More photos at my Flickr page.
Nice. I’m thinking about getting one although I have a 20GB iHP (iRiver) which I’m very happy with. It would be nice to have this as a backup for walks, sports, etc… while keep the HD one for home, car, office use.
One question, how well can you use this without using iTunes. I already use other apps for managing my music and would just like to drag and drop stuff onto the Shuffle, any reason why this wouldn’t work?
Alex, I did not try to use it in the full manual mode. I usually load the songs at home and use it purely as flash disk in the office. It irks me a bit that, when iTunes controls the songs, I can’t use it on another computer with iTunes. It insists that I “transfer the ownership” to that comp, or it will ignore the Shuffle.
I’m gonna flag manual use, just to see how it works then. Will comment here when I do that.
One thing that got me buffled on the second day: if you don’t move the slider to OFF and connect to USB, Windows will ignore the iPod — it will not show up anywhere. I did not try this with Mac. Once you move it to OFF, it’s fine.
Cool thanks. I don’t like that whole “ownership idea. Keep me in touch of how the manul setting works, very interested.
I picked up a 1GB last night and am very annoyed with it.
First, the shape, it doesn’t fit on any of my Dell PC’s
Then… this whole controlled by iTunes/rationing thing. Ugh
I have not tried manual mode yet, but this kills the hope a bit. :S
Well, it’s bad news. First, there is no actual manual mode here at all. It must have been in my head or I mistaken it for hard disk iPods.
There is no regular chance to update the song list from anywhere expect the iTunes, and only on one computer. Period. :(
This page sums it all up.