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Reviews Written By: A1Y32JMVKBL7ZS

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	Apple 80 GB iPod with Video Playback (Black)
	"Expand the capabilities of this player"	2009-10-19
One has to wonder why it is still priced at $[...] (as of Oct. 2009). Bought a refurbished one, after years of enjoying my Creative Zen Xtra and looking down on all iPods. So I looked at this only after it was pretty clear nobody in the world was doing any future development for my player, which I still love. The refurbished iPod 5.5 gen. 80Gb I bought has a new, brighter screen (a DYI fix if you're reasonably good with your hands and can follow instructions), new battery with higher capacity (nearly 18 hours and even easier to replace than the screen), and new hard drive. I still resent the fact that the user can't replace a batter - seems to be a religion with Apple, even on their mobile phones, when the rest of the civilized world can buy a new battery for any other mobile phone. Go figure. But what made the decision easy for me - and I will warmly recommend this to anyone - was the availability of the open-source Rockbox firmware for this model (and many other iPod models while we're at it). Available from [...], the firmware allows you to play (in addition to all of Apple's formats) "royalty free" formats like .ogg, FLAC (FREE Lossless Audio Codec), MPEG for video, plus features like gapless playback, ReplayGain support - the list goes on and on. Like different themes? You can roll your own, or choose from a pretty wide gallery of themes, install them on your player, and customize them to your heart's content. And then there's games. Doom? Packman - with the original look and feel? You got it. And applications to view photos, text files, contacts, calendars, and many more. Get a complete list at the rockbox site. Oh, and the beauty of it? The original Apple firmware stays on your player, and you can dual-boot and switch between them. Interestingly, any track you load via the iTunes software on your computer, with your player booted into the Apple firmware, will be visible to Rockbox - after you refresh the Rockbox database on the player. But the opposite is not true - Tracks you've loaded when the player was booted into Rockbox won't be visible to the Apple firmware. You only need to download and install a small utility (Windows, Mac OS-X, Linux 32-bit, Linux 64-bit - and since this is open source, the source code is available too). This will in turn install a boot-loader on your player, and the operating-system software. It will go and fetch games, fonts, and themes for you, as well as updates to the OS, and install them on your player. It will cost you nothing, so first, BACK UP YOUR iPod, and give it a try.
	Apple 80 GB iPod with Video Playback White
	"Expand the capabilities of this player"	2009-10-19
One has to wonder why it is still priced at $[...] (as of Oct. 2009). Bought a refurbished one, after years of enjoying my Creative Zen Xtra and looking down on all iPods. So I looked at this only after it was pretty clear nobody in the world was doing any future development for my player, which I still love. The refurbished iPod 5.5 gen. 80Gb I bought has a new, brighter screen (a DYI fix if you're reasonably good with your hands and can follow instructions), new battery with higher capacity (nearly 18 hours and even easier to replace than the screen), and new hard drive. I still resent the fact that the user can't replace a batter - seems to be a religion with Apple, even on their mobile phones, when the rest of the civilized world can buy a new battery for any other mobile phone. Go figure. But what made the decision easy for me - and I will warmly recommend this to anyone - was the availability of the open-source Rockbox firmware for this model (and many other iPod models while we're at it). Available from [...], the firmware allows you to play (in addition to all of Apple's formats) "royalty free" formats like .ogg, FLAC (FREE Lossless Audio Codec), MPEG for video, plus features like gapless playback, ReplayGain support - the list goes on and on. Like different themes? You can roll your own, or choose from a pretty wide gallery of themes, install them on your player, and customize them to your heart's content. And then there's games. Doom? Packman - with the original look and feel? You got it. And applications to view photos, text files, contacts, calendars, and many more. Get a complete list at the rockbox site. Oh, and the beauty of it? The original Apple firmware stays on your player, and you can dual-boot and switch between them. Interestingly, any track you load via the iTunes software on your computer, with your player booted into the Apple firmware, will be visible to Rockbox - after you refresh the Rockbox database on the player. But the opposite is not true - Tracks you've loaded when the player was booted into Rockbox won't be visible to the Apple firmware. You only need to download and install a small utility (Windows, Mac OS-X, Linux 32-bit, Linux 64-bit - and since this is open source, the source code is available too). This will in turn install a boot-loader on your player, and the operating-system software. It will go and fetch games, fonts, and themes for you, as well as updates to the OS, and install them on your player. It will cost you nothing, so first, BACK UP YOUR iPod, and give it a try.
	Creative Labs Nomad Zen Xtra 60 GB MP3 Jukebox
	"Absolute best value"	2005-11-09
Besides all the great stuff you can read in other reviews, I find it amazing how few people mentioned the best reason for owning this one: USER REPLACEABLE BATTERY. Most folks don't realize what a hassle it will be to have to send their iPods back to have the batteries replaced when they no longer hold a charge, not to mention the cost. If you own this model, you can get a replacement battery on eBay almost for a song. I've owned one of these for over a year, still working perfectly. There were problems with early models, most or all seem to have been resolved. Oh, and you'll do yourself an immense favor, if you invest just a little bit more in a decent pair of earphones and the Red-Chair software to manage your sync/track/playlist transfers from computer to device and back. Both of these apply to practically any player you may buy.
	PNY E-Commerce 512 MB USB 2.0 Portable Drive
	"Good, but not as advertized"	2004-04-30
This is my first day using this product, so far so good. It does what the product description says it should do. However, the photograph above is of a product that may exist out there, but not of the product I have, even though it certainly IS a PNY 512 Mb USB portable drive. The shape/design is a little different, but more importantly: 1. No write/delete protection switch. If you look at the photo above and expect it to have the same switch that prevents deletion, which is present on all the other models of lower capacity by PNY - you won't find it. 2. The lanyard on all the other similar PNY products is attached to the body of the stick, whereas on mine the lanyard attaches only to the cap. There's the potential danger that the stick may drop out of its own weight (though the cap attaches to it quite securely). If you're worried about this, carry it in your shirt pocket and use the pretty lanyard for something else. 3. The ton of information that comes on a minidisk for this product is useless, they all talk about the other models that look like the photo above. For one thing, there's a green led and a yellow led, and I'm left to guess that the difference is that one lights up for USB 1.1 connections and the other for USB 2.0 connections, or that one lights up for Windows 2000 and the other for WinXP - who knows. Worse, there is NOBODY TO TALK TO. I can't find a link on the PNY site to communicate with their tech support, you'll find lots of FAQs but no one to talk to if you have questions. 4. What drive letter is assigned to it when you use it on Windows systems - a total mystery. It comes up as D on one system and E on another - I suspect it finds the first available letter above C and uses that. I did assign it a specific letter on one system, but it still came up as another letter on a different machine, and I won't know until I'm back at the first system if that means I need to start re-assigning drive letters every time I use it on a different system. If it turns out that it does find the first available letter, that's a vast improvement on previous versions, but it would be nice to have that documented somewhere. Other than that, it works as advertized, I'm happily transferring files back and forth. Wouldn't you know it, as soon as I make the point about the difference between the product and the photo above, Amazon was kind enough to update the photo. Just so there are no doubts, as of this writing, what you see is what you get.
	Bach: The Six Sonatas and Partitas
	"You've never heard the guitar played like this"	2003-07-31
I was skeptical about this 8-string guitar, but right from the first bar of the first movement, I realized this was going to be an extremely pleasurable musical experience. Paul Galbraith has brought the guitar to a new level of classical expression. But even if you forgot that as you listened to it - which is hard to do given the brilliance of the sound, especially in the low registers - his interpretation of "the six violin solos" as he (and Bach himself) calls them, as a single work meant to be performed as one, is nothing short of genius. I also appreciated the fact that he observed the order in which Bach created them (Sonata I, Partita I, Sonata II, Partita II etc. instead of three sonatas followed by three partitas). The sound quality is perfect, though the engineers could have been more careful about pinpointing the end of one movement and beginning of the next on a few of these tracks (but I'm nitpicking). You'll love it.