I've had an iPod for over a year, and I've never had a problem, nor have any of my iPod-owning friends (although I'm possibly jinxing myself by replying here). I'm sorry yours died. :(

DOH!!!

::Urgently does de-jinxing dance!!::

And that, my friends, is why I won't purchase an iPod. I hear too many horror stories about them dying. I'll stick to lowly MP3 players...they are cheaper and I can gack the tunes from a share site.

I hate that this happened to you AGAIN!

Ah, don't you hate that?! My first mini, which I got for my birthday last year, has been dead for about seven months now. I finally got around to replacing it last week, but then disaster struck and the new one took an unexpected fall and died. It was three days old. Normally IPOD people don't give you new IPODs when you drop them, but because it was Christmas the guy wanted to be nice and ordered me a new one which will arrive in two weeks. I go back to school in one. What am I to do on the bus with all the noisy asshats without my Windu to silence them? WOE! ANGST! DESPAIR!

Good luck with your trip though.

I'm so sorry to hear about your string of bad luck. I had bought my iPod Mini a week before going on my week-long beach vacation, only to have it die my first day there (lost all power and wouldn't recharge). However, I'm fortunate enough to live within minutes of TWO different authentic Mac stores (not just other stores licensed to sell knockoffs), so I took it straight in and they had it working almost immediately.

I asked my friends about why other stores like Best Buy sell iPods, and was told that these weren't actually manufactured by Mac, but by a licensed second-party--hence they're sometimes cheaper...and not as reliable. I'm wondering now if many of the folks having all these troubles are getting the knockoffs and not realizing it.

I'm selling my iPod Mini now, but not because I was unhappy with it. I just decided I was tired of having to swap music constantly and wanted a larger drive to hold ALL my music without spending so much time swapping and selecting, etc. I now have the iPod 60GB video and ADORE it!! (I already have 30GB full!)

Now, the fact that I dropped it in the parking lot the day after I bought it, and didn't notice it was missing until I was in the office--and then ran around in a dead panic for an hour until some soul blessed by God turned it in to Lost & Found...was MY fault! :^P (I still haven't recovered from that.)

Apple is too expensive here in Australia (literally twice the price of PC), and therefore has a very limited/exclusive type of clientelle, so there's like 2 Apple 'dealerships' (for want of a better word) in all of Melbourne, (a city of 4-5 million people) and none in the rest of the state at all. So 98% of iPods here are sold via the various electrical chains/approved suppliers. I really don't think Apple would be allowed to (or want to) put their label on something that wasn't their product.

The video version came out just after I'd bought the photo version for hubby, or I'd have seriously considered getting him one. Yet my son's friend has just come to visit and he has one, which he brought round for show&tell, and he hasn't been able to load any videos on it yet because apparently the software to load the videos must be purchased separately! Which I find outrageous. That should have come with the device!

I'm just working on loading as much as I can onto hubby's iPod at the moment (so I'll have SOMETHING in the car), so I'll have to see if there's a problem or special requirements for loading photos which don't come with it...

And people used to call me crazy when I refused to buy one. I work at a service center and we get in 1000's, in a month. Granted some are in there due to customer error but a large percentage are defective. Sorry about your luck and I hope things get better.

Wow. My sister's had an iPod for a year now and it still works beautifully, and anyone else I know with them still seems pretty happy to have them.

Are they shipping all the way in from the States? I wonder if it's an issue of which factory is making them or something.

I had trouble with mine just the other day. I thought it had died, because it was completely unresponsive. I've had mine since September. Anyway, I went to the site, and followed their little instruction to leave it alone, and not to plug it into anything for twenty-four hours, and when I went back to it, it worked. You might try that if you haven't already.

Nope, it kept flashing the 'sad iPod' screen at me and the web addy for apple support. Is dead. :~(

I've had my iPod Mini for about six months now and *knock on wood* so far so good. Of course, I'm also an avid Mac user, so forgive me if I'm not as PC-savy and give you inappropriate information.

Have you tried resetting your iPod? You can find the 5 R's here to help with iPod issues. I've never had any problems with sending things into Apple and one of the things I do love about their support is that they will replace it without cost, including shipping. I'm sorry you're having issues with your iPod and I hope this little tidbit of info helps.

My friend Natalie had an iPod Shuffle, and she found out later that it was crap. Like almost *everybody* has trouble with that one, but the other versions are fine.

Umm... Hi. This is totally random, sorry. I'm a lurker and occasional commenter from the HP fandom. (We have belovedranger in common.) I did not know that you did Star Wars as well, and I just stumbled across your website today through clicking a link from a link from a link. Er, right, my point. I love, love, love, love this one and thought I should tell you how fantastic it is. :)

Ok. I'll be going now. Nothing to see here.

Hmmm. That's kind of odd. I've had my Ipod for 1 1/2 years and I use it about 5 hours everyday and I haven't had any problems out of it...

Happy birthday, Leela :)

Thanks!! :~)