Dodgey Ipod!

Teddi

This is more of a Warning when considering buying an ipod of any size!

about 6 months ago i bought a 15GB and i thought it was the best thing before sliced bread.....although.....this little thing should be stocked with an antishock...anti scrape and should constantly be covered cotten wool!.....within a month...the chrome was totally scratced to pieces!.....and i purposly took very good care of it because i knew the amount of money that went into it.....if your nail hits it....the chrome scrapes!....Problem No.2)......if you let this thing drop once??.....you can say bye bye.....as this is what exactly happened to me....it was out of my control and once it had fell...?? well.....the tracks were skipping all over the place.....songs wouldnt load......2 buttons became dis-functional.....the backlight wouldnt turn off!!!.........at the end of it all i had to send it away and get a new one.......My main thing im trying to say is........if your going to buy one of these things??

BE REALLY CAREFUL!.....inside the hard drive is a tiny delicate needle that reads the music off layered Discs....and if it falls once?......that needle could get easily damaged then your F U C K E D !......this mighent have happened to everyone......but its definatly something to think about

Kiith

i was tinking about getting an 20gig iPod from my cousin in america. it's €245. is it worth it. is it a good player. has anyone else had problems with it.

Teddi

i take it its second had at 245 euro's and a 20GB......yea...dont get me wrong.....the ipod is dlippen brilliant...the sound quality is amazing......and its super slick!......

But.........you have to care for it like a baby...LITERALLY!......it can be Damaged very easily...the only Flaw in its Design......although...the one other thing i didnt like about it was the headphones........they...well...after about an hour..they hurt the inside of my ears.....and...because the IPOD is getting popular at the moment.......thugs/thieves are now getting themselves Familiar with the Unique White earbuds/cord......so....they're gona know if you have something on you that is well worth 500 euro first hand....i opted for sony's in ear buds....there pretty expencive at about 70 euro.....but they seal out all noise around you and give you the most amazing sound you'll ever hear in your life...But...back to the ipod.....its aris your gona have to take...overall...im gald i did!

tribble

If you're a big lump of a muck savage, who's used to tossing cows around the fields then, yes the ipod is probably a little to fragile for you.
But for your average joe urban, who keeps his ipod in it's case inside his jacket pocket then it's most certainly tough enough.

And no, your fingernail will not scratch off the chrome, though Daisy might damage the paintjob when her big left hoof lands on it.

tribble

Creamy Goodness

hmm 6 months ago should the damage be covered by warranty.

to avoid the chrome i got my ipod in a iskin case since day 1 not one scratch on it and the chrome looks great

Creamy Goodness

ohh and also it's not really that the ipod is dodgey it could be the end user

Korg

This is more of a Warning when considering buying an ipod of any size!
...
this little thing should be stocked with an antishock..

In fairness the same could be said about any of the hard disk players.

Creamy Goodness

Originally posted by Korg
In fairness the same could be said about any of the hard disk players.

yeh you gotta remember than these big mp3 players are basically hard drives and one slight knock (in your case a big one) will damage the needle.

in case you don't know don't stick it near a magnet either. :eek:

Kiith

it's not second hand, it's about $299 and my cousin will ship it to me. thanks for the info people. i think i'll get him to get it tomorrow.

Mutant_Fruit

I presuem these stats are similar for all hardrives, but correct me if i'm wrong.

While my desktop hardrive is operating, it can take an impact of 20g's (half sine wave, whatever that means) before the head will hit off the disc and destroy the drive

When it isn't operating, it can take a shock of up to 200G's! And i don;t think falling from a height of 1 m will do that.

Hal1

ok then, anyone own a mini-disc player? just how fragile are they when compared to the ipod? on one side they would be alot cheaper any suggestions on a good audio player (mp3,aac) etc.

daveJAM

When it isn't operating, it can take a shock of up to 200G's! And i don;t think falling from a height of 1 m will do that.

I know 200G sounds like a lot, but when you're talking about something falling and hitting the ground, its not really. G is a measure of acceleration or, more importantly in this case, deceleration. When something is falling and hits say concrete, it comes to a stop very quickly, a few milliseconds. wouldn't be able to do most of the maths myself, but someone on bit-tech figured out that if you dropped a harddrive from about 5 metres and it hit concrete it would experience well over 200G's.

I would imagine that 2.5 drives are more fragile than 3.5 drives. So if you dropped it when turned on from a metre, I'd say it'd be borked.

briano

Hal1,

I got a sony "s2" minidisk from the states for about $299 two years ago. It is the business. Shock + water resistant, very good battery life and you can fit about 5 albums onto a single minidisk through a USB port.

The downsides are the facts that it takes AA batteries (rather than having a built in battery), there is no controller on the earphones + the controller on the unit is quite fiddly, especially in the cold. And its a hefty piece of kit.

Teddi

Dude.......id love to have a hard drive like yours...because ive never known a hard drive to be able to with stand 200G's, by nature.....hard drives come as standard without anti-shock componments because the computer ManuFacteur's and Designers know that it is going to be kept in the computer tower and not thrown around the place
.........................Ipod have Rejected Rejidedy for Style in this case....but hey.......still gealous about your hard-drives...lol :rolleyes:

daveJAM

200G is a pretty standard figure for any decent modern harddrive.

ZENER

This thread got me thinking about vynil again - how do you get those 12" LP's into the iPod? Hoe do ya change the "needle on them?:D

Seriously though - I read somewhere that normal 3.5" drives have metal platters coated in a magnetic surface of some sort. Laptop drives (2.5") have platters made from glass. The theory goes that metal will not scratch glass in the same way it can scratch metal. These drives are designed for portable use and are a bit more resiliant.

Is acceleration and force not related to weight in some way ? if you drop a 2.5 and a 3.5 inch drive fall from the same hieght will the 2.5" not suffer less because of its smaller mass ?

Tinky

exiot

If you do feck up the iPod, you can always buy a case that slips snugly around the iPod, it also gives it a new colour

I have the 20GB one, got it in November, and its not full of scratches and I use it everywhere, and its always at the bottom of my bag..

dee mm

Come on! Do you really throw your i pod on the ground that much!!! Dropped mine once, bit of a knock alright, bar a scratch no probs. Like any thing, be carefull of it.(you dont go around droping your laptop!) I think there great as music players go, and well worth the money.

daveJAM

Originally posted by tinky
Is acceleration and force not related to weight in some way ?

Force is but acceleration isn't and hard drive resilience is measured in acceleration.

Also ya need to get an add-on for the LPs. But I guess thats they way Apple work, get ya hooked on the ipod and then fleece ya for the add-ons. I'm saving up for the 8 track add-on at the moment.

Mutant_Fruit

OK, i worked it out.

A harddrive falling from a height of 1 metre will be travelling at a speed of 4.4m/s when it hits the ground. Assuming it decelerates to a speed of 0m/s within 0.01 of a second, then it will experience a force of 400 newtons.

I;m not sure how that translates into G's though. I think it works out to 200G's, as you multiply the mass of the harddrive by the force. So, you may be right.

Of course, those calculations could be way off, but i think its resonably accurate. The only inaccuracy is the time to decelerate, and i think i may have made that too small. If the deceleration time was larger, it would reduce the force hugely.

daveJAM

It was the time taken to stop that i couldn't figure out. Lets base the calculations on 0.01 seconds and the hdd being dropped from 1 metre.

v^2 = u^2+2as
v^2 = 0+2(9.8)(1)
v^2 = 19.6
v =4.42m/s - speed when hits ground

a = (v-u)/t
a = (0-4.42)/0.01
a = -442.7m/s/s

g= 9.81m/s/s

442.7/9.81 = 45.1G

But thats based on the time of deceleration of 0.01 secs which as you said could be way off.

jozi

someone was asking about mini disc, been using them for about 4-5 years now.

love it!!!

had first on for 2 years when i sold it, not sure if it still works?

some of the more expensive md player have flat batteries that take-up next no space, i think most md's are smaller than an i-pod to (if i remember first i-pod i seen looked a bit big compared to minidisc), smallest md player (non recordable) is only a little biger than a minidisc case!!!

bad thing about them is you have a bag full of md's, i do usually anyway, then again mdlp lets you record up to 360 minutes to a disc so thats less discs in your bag anyway.

i'd recomend minidisc to anyone, when there are mp3 player available smaller than a minidisc player that can store more than those flash card player then i'll give in to mp3 players and buy one

jozi

Explosive_Cornflake

But AA batteries are brilland for MD players. You get hours out of the little bastards, and a spare isn't hard to carry with you, or to buy in a shop. I'm just not going to move from MD though, cuz i own about 200 of them. Also i invested in a very good deck last year. MDSJE780 if memory serves correctly. but MD-HD is coming out sometime soon now anyway, that look interesting. I need a new player now though, i think the contacts have worn on the headphone out a bit, must try fixing it again.

s8n

whats....with....this....new....way....of....typing....you...muppet.....

jozi

i know AA batteries a dead handy, i always have one with me in the spare bat pack (mind you i hardly ever use the flat one that came with the player)

whats this MD-HD you mentioned

Explosive_Cornflake

Its a new format for MD, new disk as well, but you can reformat the old disks and they have a higher capicity.
Minidisc.org
Specs [PDF]
Sony.net page

BrianD

hmm 6 months ago should the damage be covered by warranty.

Warranty only covers manufacturing defects and not damage inflicted upon the goods by the owner!

jozi

minidisc-hd, very promising.

looks like i'll be sticking with minidisc for a nother while then, cant wait for them to come out

MoSeS_.

The fact that you have to convert your music to transfer it onto a minidisc is a pain in the ass. I have a Net MD for a couple of years now but I've still only made about 20-30 discs for it. I'm getting a 4GB Muvo2 from the states for $200 or so.
1" micro drive, should be able to take a bit more abuse than an iPod.
Just drag and drop the tunes, also acts as a portable HD for transferring files, nice.