[Suedama]

Just got the new 30 Gig model. What a piece of technology! Absolutely amazing.

Anyway, one of the first things I got for it was a copy of Nixon 1962-1972 by Stephen Ambrose from Audible.com. It's in 4 parts with each part being something on the order of 6 to 7 hours long. So I listen away for maybe an hour or so and then I accidently touch the <= button and I'm back to square one. (All the buttons are VERY sensitive to even the slightest touch.) Then I'm pressing the => button for what seems like an eternity to get back to where I was. (It jumps forward at the rate of about 1 minute reading time for each 2 or 3 seconds that the => button is held down. OK, back to listening.

I go through 2 more accidental brushes of the <= button before I realize that once I start listening I should engage the "hold" button to prevent accidental recycling of the book. I go on listening on and off for the next 2 or 3 hours. (When I stop reading, I hit the "Play/Pause" button and the spot where I left off is automatically bookmarked.)

Just when I think if got the procedure down pat, I forget to engage the hold button and, you guessed it, I get five hours into the segment and I accidently brush the <= button again and I'm back to the beginning. Now I'm holding the => button for another eternity. By now, however, the battery is completely drained from getting back to the place I left off. Hitting the => button or doing any lengthy disk search really drains the battery quickly (it seems to have about 4 to 5 hours of reading time with a full charge).

Unless I'm missing something (?) what this unit needs is some way to skip forward quickly over large files. (Each book segment is about 50 Megs in the format I downloaded.) When you get 5 hours into a 7 hour long file and you accidentally get bounced back to the beginning, it takes a long time as well as about half of a full battery charge to get back to where you were.

Apart from that relatively minor gripe, I am very favorably impressed with this unit. The sound quality is excellent (IMHO) and seems to sound at least as good as my Sony D-EJ100.

 

[blessingx]

Have you tried "pushing" the center button and moving ahead with the scroll wheel? You can get back to any spot in a couple seconds. Audible is a great service. BTW, also if you want to get the files down to a smaller size (say every 60 minutes) or to a different format look into Audio Hijack Pro (if you're on a Mac). Just finished Ambrose's "To America" on my iPod this morning.

 

[Suedama]

blessingx

Thanks, that worked! I can't believe I was unaware of this method to skip forward.

Audio Hijack Pro sounds interesting, but I'm a Windows user.

 

[blessingx]

I think I had my iPod for over a month before I found it. Also if you haven't seen them yet, check out iPoding and iPod Lounge.

 

[MacDEF]

Yeah, the "scrub" feature is very cool. I discovered it by accident one day when I was trying to change the volume

 

[NewSc2]

Yeah, I remember trying to raise the volume one day and it fastforwarded the song. Luckily this happened in the first couple days of me owning my iPod so I didn't have to go through what you went through.


From the looks of this thread, it doesn't look like many of us stopped to read the iPod's manual fully