Reliability (or lack thereof) of iPod technology

imho, yes.  ive had mine for years and its still going strong but it will depend on how well treated its been

my ipod touch broke on me but i contacted apple and tehy sent me a new one so i can't complain. best customer support i have ever experienced.

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Originally Posted by Sonic Atrocity 

See, I'd lose my customer support once I rockbox it. I hate the iPod's firmware.

 

my ipod touch was jailbroken so i restored it and voila they replaced it.

edit: i don't think there would be any warranty considering how old the 5.5g is. if you get one of those you might have to take it by day. i have an ipod classic 6g and its rockboxed and its been working for 3.5 years. so in that case they are really reliable.

I have a 5th Gen iPod 60G that I bought when they first came out about 6 years ago.

I've never had a problem with it. It still works great.

I use it several hours a day since I get to listen to music all day at work. I have a Harmon Kardon dock in my car that I use it on a lot as well (almost daily).

I put a 240G drive in it a few years ago and I have put 2 new batteries in it over the years.

It's even been Rockboxed a couple of times but I went back to the stock firmware after playing for a while both times.

I would call it very reliable so far. I've never owned another model though so I don't know about them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonic Atrocity 

How easy is it to replace batteries? Is it like a huge hassle?

with ipods it requires a bit of diy.

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Originally Posted by bcasey25raptor 

with ipods it requires a bit of diy.

A bit of soldering, strong suction cups...not for the faint of heart, that's for sure.

I've never had big QC issues with my iPod, my old iPod Touch...well, it's definitely taken a beating, but it still works.  It looks like hell and sounds kind of awful now, but nothing is outright broken.

Gen 2 Ipod. The one that came out in 2003. It still works..barely. I'm swapping out the HDD in a couple of months when it becomes unusable. Besides that, no issues. (I know it's an hdd issue. How else would my ipod that has gone through 4 falls, 2 water immersions, and several kicks fail?)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonic Atrocity 

How easy is it to replace batteries? Is it like a huge hassle?

With mine the batteries came with two plastic prying tools to help get the back of the case off.

After the back of the case is off it is just a matter unplugging the old one and plugging the new one in.

It's not hard to do but you do want to take your time so that you do not break anything when separating the case.

if you dont mind the bad sound quality. the bad format support. the restrictive envirenment of itunes.

a fried battery should be no issue for you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonic Atrocity 

Is the sound quality bad? I have heard that iPod Classic generations 4.0 through 5.5 (but most particularly 5.0 and 5.5) have a high quality Wolfson DAC. Although it wasn't engineered with the best forethought (being that there is the Whipmod and iMod) I have heard it sounds good. Are you sure about your claim?

I find the sound quality to be quite good myself.

I use ALAC almost exclusively.

I use a LOD connector to go to a Practical Devices XM5 for portable use or at work and use a dock at home or in the car with it.

I do find that the output from the headphone jack is a bit lacking on all of the headphones and IEM's that I have. In fact, I don't use the headphone out on it for anything but listening to podcasts.

I find that the iPod stands up very well in sound quality against a few CD players that I have compared it with when it is given an ALAC file and a dock connection to a decent home system. This home system is good enough that I can tell that something is not right when playing a 256k MP3 though it. The difference between the iPod and the different CD players on this system is very small and really just comes down to the nuances of the different sound signatures of the equipment.

One thing I would dog the iPod on is features. With the stock firmware you get nothing as far as tone controls or equalizer that is usable. The equalizer in the iPod really bad but I don't tend to use an equalizer on anything anyway so I'm good.

iTunes is a love/hate relationship with me. I absolutely hate how sluggish iTunes behaves and how everything is basically Apple's way or no way but I love the smart play lists and syncing.

I have ~3,500 albums in iTunes, almost all of them in ALAC format and have had to resort to some after market add ons to manage a lot of things that are trivial in almost any other music library software that I have tried. If only someone else did the smart play lists that actually worked correctly on the iPod I would probably convert in a heart beat.