Having grown up with Apple products, I am familiar with the famous semi-devoured logo. When the iPod first came out, I could not afford the pricetag that was attached to the product. It was not until the winter of 2004 that I would be introduced to the iPod - I had luckily snagged a 4th generation 20gb iPod in a contest - and I instantly fell in love. The ease of use, sound quality and aesthetics were all very pleasing. Two years later, after having been accidentally dropped into a puddle, the unit stopped working. I needed a new MP3 player, as I could not deal with my daily commute without the music that I had ripped from my large CD Collection.

When the time came to purchase a new one, I went for an iPod. The 2nd generation of iPod shuffles had just come out, and I decided to pick one up, as the lack of moving parts and small form factor appealed to my needs. Upon receiving the unit, which included, in a very stylish plastic shell, the player itself, a pair of headphones, a data transfer cable/dock, instructions and warranty information and a couple of the aforementioned logos in sticker form.

At the time, I was the happy owner of a MacBook (and still am), and I was already using iTunes as my primary media player, so transferring songs was a very simple procedure. I simply hooked up the included docking cable to a USB port on my MacBook, popped the iPod into it, and iTunes automatically detected it, loaded up and brought me to the iPod interface. Copying my songs to it was a hitch, as I already had the music loaded into my Library, I just dragged and dropped a number of albums to my iPod, waited for the transfer to complete and I was off to test it out (after having charged the battery, of course)

The iPod controls are very simple. Two switches on the top and five buttons on the front. One switch turns the unit on, with an activity light indicating its current state, while the other switch toggles between playlist mode and shuffle mode. The button controls consist of volume controls, next and previous and a play/pause button in the center. Although the unit has no screen, if you know what music you have put onto your iPod, finding a particular song is quite easy. The unit itself has a clip built into it, allowing for the user to clip it onto an article of clothing, a pocket inside of a back pack, wherever. Personally, I pass the headphones inside my shirt and clip the player to the coin pocket on my jeans (when I am wearing jeans), and I am able

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