A Tale of Two iPods

A little while ago I had a very good contact at Apple Computer. He was my counterpart while I was working for one of their software partners and was a very nice guy. Every time I would visit him, he would take me to the employee store and tell me I could get anything I wanted using his significant discount. Most of the time I didn't want to impose upon his generosity and so I left empty handed. However once I felt it would be good for company relations if I made a token purchase. I decided on a top-of-the-line iPod.

I had always wanted an iPod even though I had an MP3 player. I opened the box on the flight home and inspected my new toy. It was really quite the bargain but still wasn't in the family budget. I couldn't expense it even though I only purchased the gadget as a goodwill gesture between Apple and my company at the time. I decided that the best tactic was to tell my wife I got it for her. If she didn't want it, then I had a new toy.

Little did I know that my wife had wanted a new iPod as well and was happy with the gift. She put her music on the device and left me the task of making it fit in the family budget. With a little creativity, things worked out and I didn't have to sell one of the children.

Then my wife got a new Samsung mobile phone that doubled as an MP3 player. She thought this would be great because she could put all her music on her phone for those jogs with the dog. My oldest son saw this as an opportunity to get a free iPod. As soon as my wife started using her phone, he promptly wiped out my wife's music and loaded it up with his own. I had my iPhone at this point and my son knew I wouldn't try to take it.

Unfortunately the Samsung phone isn't nearly as convenient as an iPod. My wife would buy songs from iTunes but not be able to convert them to MP3 files so she could load them on her phone. After several months, she had had enough and wanted her iPod back. Naturally my son felt victimized because he was loosing his music player. He resisted and resisted but finally decided that there were too many privileges he enjoys and doesn't want any of them revoked.

My son has the same phone as my wife and decided he would try to use that. Unfortunately the iPod has a 60 GB capacity while his phone only holds 1. His PSP can also play music and it has 4 GB of memory. Since he only has about 3 and a half gigs of music, the PSP would actually work for him. The only problem is that his battery is old and lasts about 10 minutes before dying. So he started looking at getting new battery for the PSP.

Saturday I get a call from my son who was at the local Kmart. "Dad," he said, "Kmart has the best prices on PSP batteries but it is still $30." I suggested that he look at the price for a new memory card for his phone. It might be cheaper. A half hour later he walks in the door and shows me his new memory card. Not only was it 4 GB, but it also came with a mini USB adapter so he can plug it directly into any computer's USB port to load it up with songs. It was half as expensive as the battery and so my son was happy.

As for that little problem about not being able to play songs purchased on iTunes, my son figured out a way around that. It involves creating a CD with purchased songs for use in a regular CD player and then converting the songs to MP3s. Leave it to a teenage kid to figure out how to make everything work.