Thursday, May 05, 2005

PERIPHERAL ELECTRONICS

this is another company that is making great strides to integrate your iPod into the current system of your car. very cool stuff.

PERIPHERAL ELECTRONICS

7 comments:

Kristin said...

I got my loverly IPod shuffle (for free no less)on Tuesday... I'm not so keen on the software - drag n drop would make some sense apple people....

On a completely unrelated note, your questions are finally posted.

Dtrini said...

Free is always a good thing. I would be interested in knowing how you rate the usability and sound quality of the Shuffle.

As for the questions, I will connect up and post today. Thanks.

Kristin said...

The sound quality is phenomenal - I'm impressed - the usability of the unit itself, easy peasy... the software - another matter all together.
iTunes irritated the fuck out of me. 109 songs - approx 8 hrs of music, and it took 4 hrs to transfer because the stupid assed software kept freezing up. The Shuffle is high speed and neither of my USB ports on my machine are apparently, so there may have been some slight conflicts that arose from that.
Its the 520, which wasn't what I was supposed to get (I was only supposed to get 125).
It came with the software, a lanyard USB cap, standard USB cap, earbud headphones, two sets of foamies, all in an Granny Smith green box (or was that a sesame seed bun?).

The only potential PITA thing is that when you do wear it around your neck with the lanyard, I'd suggest wearing it backwards as the play/pause button is easily pressed if you even gently lean on something.

Its about the size of my zippo lighter and it fits in my cleavage. ;-) (please please don't ask)

Kristin said...

Oh more on iTunes... When it doesn't like a song - an illegal character in the title, for some reason the MP3 is corrupt as far as iTunes is concerned..whatever the issue - it will just continually try to transfer the song without giving an error message and if you try to eject the iPod, it freezes up and locks up and then you start alllllll over again.

The autofill feature is nice - you can choose for the library to populate the entire iPod with everything in the library, or if you've just added/replaced songs, it will figure all that out.

HOWEVER - drag n drop in windows would be much saner, but I'm sure big brother knows how much music I have now.

BTW, my thanks to TDCanadaTrust for my happy new white iPod Shuffle.. and my thanks to CDW Canada for screwing up the order and sending me a better iPod. :-)

Dtrini said...

OK, I have to ask. how did you get a Shuffle from TDC? We just opened an account with them and are about to close it because they soooo suck.

Anyhow, we have two iPods (a 2nd generation 20GB and a 4th generation 40GB) and absolutely love the things. I really want to get it hookd up in the car with full digital sound. But, the cost to do so right now is a bit prohibitive.

As far as iTunes goes, I know it is a touch inflexible compared to some other applications but I really do prefer it. Musicmatch Jukebox was originally the software you had to use to get songs onto the iPod before Apple gave in and ported iTunes to Windows. I believe that it still will work so you can give that a try and see if you like it better. Go here (http://www.musicmatch.com/) to get it.

As for drag and drop, the Apple website says it can be done in iTunes. Did you want to do it outside of the application? You can try what they say at this website (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000390039631/).

One more question on the shuffle itself. It has only come in two models, 512MB and 1GB. Are you sure they did not send you the smaller one instead of the larger one?

Dtrini said...

Oh, I forgot to address one thing Kristin. You will definitely have issues having the mismatched USB standards. Whiel USB 2.0 is fully backward compatible to USB 1.1, it really is an exercise in aggravation.

I would strongly recommend getting a simple upgrade for your system that will benefit you not only for your iPod Shuffle but for all your USB devices.

Go to the website (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1070706&CatId=511) to see the USB card. If you do any video camera taping with miniDV, then I would suggest getting a combo card that adds FireWire (IEEE1394, iLink). You can see one here http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1134741&CatId=0.

Kristin said...

According to Apple's site, there are two versions, the 512 and the 1gig - according to TD canada trust, there was 120 and 512 - hence why I thought I had the bigger of the two avail but I have the smaller - which is still cool - its 8 hrs worth of music.
Thanks for the info on the USB and the software - not my machine, not my problem ;-) I will mention it tho.

You can drag n drop INTO iTunes, thats not an issue, but I just wanted to be able to go "my computer, click on the iPod, click open the network, choose 120 songs off this machine and copy to ipod" without software in between....it is afterall data files.

Thanks for the links.

Oh and I believe that it may have just been a Calgary (or maybe Alberta wide) TD Canada Trust promo for the iPod give away.
And anything has to be better than CIBC... well they're all shite (I worked for ADT and I dealt with all financial institutions and their alarm systems and they're all stupid stupid people, not one bank was any better than another).