2 of 4

Write now Article Tools

Modern culture has thrown us a variety of icons to worship over the years. While the sixties had the Beatles and "herbal cigarettes," the seventies had the Osmonds, the eighties had...whatever horror was cool from one fickle day to the next, and the nineties had the Spice Girls, the good people at Apple have given us our click-wheeled messiah for the noughties - the iPod. But, when 2GB of storage on a standard mp3 player can now be bought for a quarter the price of its iPod counterpart, the question of whether the iPod is really THAT good becomes an important consumer issue.

Apple's obvious advantage comes in terms of size. Very few other manufacturers (Creative, Sony, and more recently Philips) offer the same massive storage the video iPod does. For 178.97, Argos will supply the buyer with a 30GB Video iPod - about the same size as your average laptop hard drive a few years ago. The iPod's specs boast that it can store 7,500 songs - a massive amount of music that surely no consumer outside of the music industry can ever really need. If each song is 4 minutes long, this equates to a massive 500 hours of music - nearly 21 days if played consecutively (which, considering the iPod's battery life is something approaching 14 hours, is physically impossible in itself).
What must be remembered, however, is that with a machine of this capacity, it is video that counts, and here that the iPod is really unsurpassed. While the technical specifications make for very impressive, and yet totally-illegible-to-the-man-i n-the-street viewing, the iPod is basically a small LCD television in terms of picture quality - an alternative to the portable DVD player, that doesn't have easy-to-unfasten-and-swallow hinges that break every five seconds, and the inevitability of scratched copies of Shrek and his live-action friends. That the majority of cars with built-in T.V screens are also now including iPod connections speaks for itself - the 30GB ipod video is a vital travelling tool that is worth the money for any film buff or harassed parent. It could do with a better battery, but against the alternative of smaller-storage video-playing devices, it wins hands down every time.
However, the line between the smaller storage, music-only iPod and its rival mp3 players is much more blurred. For 98.97, Argos (and most other iPod stockists) will sell you the Apple iPod nano 2GB. It stores 500 tracks - or about 40 albums - just about enough for running, bicycling, travelling or simply

• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Deciding between an iPod or an MP3?
We want to hear your view. Write now!