I've currently the owner of a 27 month old 20Gb 3G iPod, which is now on its last legs. I'm having multiple issues, including:

Repeated disk errors when syncing
Decreasing battery life (I guess to be expected)
A hold switch that sometimes doesn't switch off

Of course the second two issues would become noticeable when my 2 year extended Apple Care package ran out in September. I did send the iPod to Apple around May this year when the disk errors started and they returned it saying it was working within acceptable limits

Anyway way I'm figuring that I'm going to have to replace it soon, but I was hoping that I could get some advice.

Firstly, I wondering what length of life expectancy people have managed to get with HDD based players. As I just feel that just over 2 years is a bit short for something that I paid £270 for.

Secondly, I want to look at the alternatives to the iPod, though my collection is currently in the m4a format so I would prefer not to have to re-encode everything.

Thanks

The life should depend on use, some players get their HD damaged from constant and hard motion. I wouldn't know about the iPod, though.
Battery life is expected to be of roughly two years.


You have no alternative but the iPod, AFAIK.

You should e-mail Apple and say: "My previous iPod started to encounter problems after two years. Is this about how long I should expect my future Apple purchases to last? What's the expected lifespan of an iPod?"

Can you tell us here, how you used your ipod during the 2 years ?
eg. made you sports with it like running, jogging ?
or was it more a player in car or home without shocks ?

At least this might be an example, to use more free & widespread formats, mp3-lame eg, then he is free to use another player, not expensive apple anymore.

According to my opinion, I use a flash-memory player for portable usage, jogging, car, 1 GB usb does fine so far.
And i don#t need to deal with battery life, it is driven by 1 small AAA (or AA, doesn#t matter) cell, rechargable, cheap, can be replaced anyhwere in the world for low money.

No I made sure to never use my iPod when I was doing sport, as I relised that was a bad idea with HDD based players. I generally listened to it when I commute in to University (so walking and train) or when I'm driving in the car using a iTrip (which is great BTW). So the most shock it has recieved will have been for half a dozen sprints when I've relised I'm late for the train.



I've had a look on the Apple website for a email address to contact, but they don't appear to give one. And I'm not paying money to phone their tech support line, as from my previous experience in May I know this will put you through to someone in India that will not know how to help you.

That could just be it ... along with extensive usage of your iPod.

Remember ... any kind of periodic (even during slow walking or cycling) or abrupt movement (device falling down during playback) has its impact on life expectancy of mechanical devices (especially on miniature high-capacity 1,8" HDD's that rotate at 4200 RPM) ...

My advice would be to backup your music and get yourself a replacement HDD (Toshiba MK-3006GAL with 30GB is the same-sized (5mm thickness) successor to the one that is built in), alongside with a replacement battery (maybe higher capacity) ... the overall investment shouldn't be higher than 150 US$ for additional 10GB alongside with longer battery runtime ... and installation is quite simple.

Since there's other issues as well (the hold switch is broken) I'd probably just get a 5G iPod. I think the 3G iPods were the least durable of all.

The problem is, how do we know how durable the 5G iPod is as it is just out.

If you want durability, HDD players are a bad idea!