My "New" iPod

When the iPod Nano came out this year, I was pretty sure that it was the only thing I wanted for Christmas. And we are already a multi iPod household so this seems ridiculous, but let me explain.

When the iPod Mini came out two years ago, LaLa and I thought it was a less expensive way to own an iPod and honestly the green color and the size made it so damn cute. We pooled all our xmas gift monies and bought one, named it "sweetpea" and have loved it dearly ever since. It is honestly one of our most treasured objects and we very nearly worship the thing.

So when I realized I'd be doing a lot of traveling this year for business (air and rail alike!) I desperately wanted music with me, but I could not bear the thought of taking sweetpea. If anything happened to sweetpea I would be devastated. So LaLa and I talked it over and we decided to buy a shuffle. Not the best financial decision I admit, but if you knew how much I hate traveling and how much relief having all my "5 stah!" songs with me brings me...you'd allow me that weakness. So I had a shuffle for travel, and LaLa had sweetpea dedicated to workouts and roadtrips of course.

When the Nano came along, I realized that what I really wanted was 1) something that wasn't as precious as sweetpea 2) had my contacts from my iMac's address book and 3) had my iCal calendar info and the shuffle wasn't cutting it on 2 and 3. (Ridiculous...isn't it?)

BUT. I don't want a Nano anymore (at least not right now). I am the proud owner of a 3rd Generation 10GB iPod that I got for essentially $40.

While I was at my parents house for Thanksgiving I learned that my sister's iPod had stopped working several months ago. The Apple store told my folks some crap about it being not worth it to fix so ... well I think they bought my sister an iPod mini to replace it. My sister told me that the battery would not hold a charge and I knew there were kits out there to replace iPod batteries and even services that will do it for $64. So I asked if I could have it and she said yes, but wanted me to save her playlist data for her.

When I got it home, I fiddled around with several programs and applescripts until I found the one that could extract the song names from a playlist. I then located this page and went through all the steps to make sure the battery was in fact no good. Once I determined that, I ordered a new iPod battery replacement kit from Sonnet Technologies for $39.90 shipped.

It arrived while I was traveling last week, but I finally installed it yesterday. The iPod is pretty scratched up from living in my sister's bag for 2 years (I found a few grains of beach sand *inside* the ipod!) so I gave it the once over with some plastic polish which helped a little. I've got my highly rated and my purchased songs on the 'pod and today I finally loaded up iPodBartender and westciv's CSS podGuide. With my contacts and calendar on there too I am truly ready for anything ;)

And my new battery lasted more than 8.5 hours on it's maiden voyage. Sweet!


Sometimes when things seem broken, it really just takes some research and a simple repair (ok maybe not *simple* but totally *do-able* I mean...they give you a video!) to make something whole again. And another person's trash is someone's treasure. Or something like that.