Geek & Mild by Sean Sperte

Pluses and minuses of nano ownership

After a day of nano ownership, here’s (the first of) my inevitable review(s).

The pluses:

• Amazing screen – it literally looks like paper, and works well in direct sunlight
• USB 2.0 is super-fast; noticeable faster than FireWire, for some reason
• Menu access is faster than previous models
• Sound-quality is great

The minuses (mostly with iTunes):

• Can’t leave the nano in the source list (as you can with the shuffle)
• When using the Manually Update option, you must manually update songs you’ve changed (e.g. by adding album art), which means you can easily create duplicates
• Similarly, “Show duplicate songs” isn’t supported within the iPod songlist
• It’s a magnet for fingerprints and scratches (com’on Apple, get those cases shipping!)

18-Sep 2005