June Tech Review - Apple Video iPod

Last year I amassed too much money into my PayPal account in an attempt to buy tickets to the USC vs. Notre Dame football game. I won the tickets I was after, but the payment end of things didn't work right... I paid twice and still had to send the seller a check.

The result... my son Chris and I saw one of the greatest football games in college football history. I also had about $1,500 bucks in my PayPal account that had to be used up. So I went on a shopping spree.

One of the items I picked up was the Apple 30 GB Video iPod. Have owned a number of MP3 players and an iPod Nano I wanted to check out a full-sized iPod and see what all the hype was about. Was "video" and 30 GB really that impressive and really needed? The answer - a resounding YES!

First and foremost, the 30 GB unit does a complete backup of my music library. I don't have to management my sync list like I do on my Nano... hook it in and my entire music collection is not only backed up and safe, but ready for me to use. How long does it take - let me check - 40 seconds to back up 16 GB of content. Not bad... (of course it's only updating new content such as recent music purchases and Podcast updates.)

In all of my previous music players I had to pick and choose what content I wanted to sync and what had to be purged. Not every song could come along for the trip. 30 GB fixed that challenge.

What's the other cool feature of the video iPod? The video. Not only do I have my music, I have some of my favorite shows such as LOST and 24. The screen is small but when you put the iPod like 8 inches from your face - looks like a big screen - no joke.

I need to figure out how to get movies onto the iPod. Does anyone know how to do that? If I could take just one or two classic flicks on every trip I could be occupied the entire time!

TK