Ipod users unite. Ipod reins supreme!
Charles

 

I was told by a Best Buy employee that one of the reasons Ipod Mini is selling so well is that the memory cards can be removed and used to store photos!? Apparently buying the Ipod Mini is much cheaper than buying that much memory for cameras. Therefore it Mini Ipods are very difficult to come by. Does this make sense to anyone?

 

iPod Minis are not flash card based. They have a small hard drive. It is other flash based player that people are buying for the above mentioned reasons.

 

oops, I could be wrong about what they are using the iPod for. Yes, it does have a hitachi microdrive (I think) which can be used like a compactflash card.

 

Yeah the people with the super high end cameras can buy an Ipod, crack the case and throw the microdrive in their camerea, or they can spend twice the price of an Ipod and buy the same microdrive in a camera store...

It's not the main reason for the general shortage, but it is helping to contribute to it.

 

This is not the first product to have this drive and not the first product to sell for this reason. It shows you the mark up on memory.

 

The iPod is designed to be a music player and it is great at this. The other major features of the iPod are the ability to record voice and store photos. These features can be unlocked by buying one of the voice or media recorders from a manufacture like Belkin. Here's the link: http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatSecti...tion_Id=201526 . The media reader doesn't act like a memory card. It allows somebody to use a small (32MB or so) memory card and just plug it into the card reader on the iPod to copy the photos and re-use the memory card instead of having to buy one very large memory (512MB+) card that is expensive. The voice recorder allows somebody to record a speech directly to their iPod,

The iPod mini is more of a rich person's toy IMHO. It's physically smaller than the iPods but it's less than 1/4 the capacity...and it's colored. For $50 more, you could get a 20GB full size iPod that's much more useful. I'm very surprised (along with many other Mac fans) that there are so many people buying the mini. I'm not complaining since our company is doing so good but it's like buying a MINI for 23k if you could buy a Ferrari for 30k. The MINI is cooler but you get so much more with the Ferrari.

I'm not downing the iPod mini but just know your options before you decide to get one. I can tell you that 4 GB gets full pretty quick. My 10 GB is full.

 

Do you work for Apple?

 

Aren't all iPods rich mens toys? For $50 - $100 less you can get a different brand with much larger storage and all the same functionality. I know people are willing to pay a premium for anything with that fruit on it.

 

Yeah, we get a lot of "rich men" coming in to the Apple Store all the time to buy our iPods.

So name some devies that have ALL the functionality of an iPod for $100 less. USB 2.0 AND Firewire (not either or), small desgn, capable of being used as a hard drive for storing/transferring data, photos, backing up your documents, ability to connect a digital camera directly to the device to store pics, ability to do voice memos, etc...