Doin' the iPOD Shuffle (from Really Random Reviews)

At first I was a bit skeptical about the new iPOD shuffle. I thought that it was pretty much a waste of money for very limited control (you can only play music straight through or on shuffle) until I realized that all I listened to were podcasts.

Podcasts on the shuffle make sense. Most of the time, the amount of podcasts that I listen to are well below the 1 Gig limit of the shuffle. There is a bit of technical wizardry involved in getting it to sync right. It is not as easy or as quick as the other iPods. The lack of a great podcast sync option is my biggest gripe with the shuffle. For regular listening the "autofill" option is fantastic. Just designate a playlist and it randomly fills up your iPod. For me, I insert my unplayed podcasts and then autofill the rest of the shuffle to it's limit with my favorite "Code Monkey" playlist.

The shuffle really makes my listening life easier. I work in a lab where it gets annoying to carry around a bulky iPOD all day. The shuffle clips to my lab coat and allows me to easily toggle it on or off when I need to. I look like a "Star Trek: The Next Generation" character activating his communicator most of the time, but it really is a lot easier. The buttons take a little longer to get used to. If you have an Apple remote control, you will get used to the shuffle controls fast because the shuffle basically is an Apple remote miniaturized. Heck, the whole player is so small that my big, fat fingers have a tough time with it. After a few hours, it started to get easier and by the end of the day I was operating it without even looking at the controls.

I was afraid I would look MORE dorky by wearing it, but I had several compliments yesterday about how cool it was. The color seems to be the attractive factor. I choose the orange primarily because Apple has not done an orange color before on its iPod.

I think this is a good second player for all of you out there with iPods. It would be great for exercising and places where you don't want to fiddle with your full sized iPod.

Plus that orange is really snappy.