Apple 40 GB iPod from HP (MP103)

Other products by Hewlett-Packard

Product Details

Product Manual [10.32mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0002OG6CA
• Item model number: PE436A
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #56,337 in Electronics (See Bestsellers in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 26, 2004

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

From the Manufacturer It's an ultraportable digital music player that enables you to bring your entire music collection with you, wherever you go. It's the kind of flexibility you want – listen to music on the bus, at the gym, at work. No more lugging around a heavy bag of CDs. The iPod weighs just a few ounces and you can put 10,000 songs on it.

It's fast. Just plug it into your computer and with the help of a USB 2.0 connector, you can download your entire music library from iTunes at blazing speeds. Don’t worry about keeping iTunes and iPod in sync – they sync up automatically when the iPod is plugged in. It's easy to use. The unique Click Wheel navigation is intuitive to use. The Click Wheel—an innovation in usability—makes it both fun and easy to select playlists, scroll through artists, and choose the song you want without lifting your thumb.

Connect the iPod to your PC and transfer music automatically. Auto-Sync makes updating music fast and easy.

With iTunes you can build your music library and make your own playlists.

It sounds great. Designed to give you the best portable digital music experience possible, the iPod delivers the highest sound quality. iPod supports the most popular audio formats – including MP3 (up to 320 kbps), MP3 variable bit rate and WAV, giving you access to a wide range of audio file types. The new Apple Lossless format lets you import music from CDs at highest quality for about half the space as uncompressed audio (AIFF). AAC features CD-quality audio in smaller sizes than MP3, so that even more songs fit on your iPod. Once you plug in your iPod, it automatically syncs with iTunes. You don’t even have to press a button. iTunes knows when you’ve plugged in your iPod to your computer. You can see at a glance what’s on your iPod in the iTunes window. If your iTunes library exceeds the iPod storage capacity, you can let iTunes fill your iPod for you. iTunes will create a playlist that fits your style — and your iPod capacity. iTunes also picks up any playlists you’ve made on your iPod so you can play or edit them on your PC. For finer control over your portable collection, you can turn off Auto-Sync and select your iPod contents manually.

Customizable settings Customize main menu Create On-The-Go Playlists Rate songs Shuffle songs or albums Repeat one or all Adjust audiobook reading speed Sound Check on or off 20 equalizer presets Backlight timer Display contrast Alarms on, off or silent Sleep timer Date and time Display time in menu bar Contacts sort and display by first or last names Clicker on or off	The iPod supports an advanced digital audio format known as Dolby AAC Format. Dolby AAC Formar rivals CD-quality sound, with higher compression levels so you can fit more music on your iPod.
	Headphones Earbud-style headphones with 18-mm drivers using Neodymium transducer magnets Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz Impedance: 32 ohms

 

	You can do a whole lot more with iPod. Take your Microsoft Entourage or Palm Desktop calendar with you. Keep your contacts at a thumb’s distance because now iPod supports industry-standard vCards. Stay on top of your day with to-do lists.		There’s a music quiz to keep you on your music trivia toes, as well as other games (Solitaire, Brick and Parachute), which comes in handy on long commutes or while waiting in lines.
	iPod also includes a notes reader so you can download text-based information and read it on the screen. Download anything from restaurant reviews or directions, work out routines or news, and have it at your fingertips when you need it.		Use the Shuffle feature in the main menu the next time you want to quickly shuffle your music – now it’s on the main menu. It’s everyone’s favorite option for mixing things up. You can shuffle your entire music collection.

Product Description

Pack up to 10, 0001 songs into your pocket with the 40GB Apple iPod from HP. How much music is that? You could listen 24 x 7 for almost four weeks in a row, never hearing the same song twice. Even better, the iPod is about as compact and lightweight as your cell phone.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Same as Apple iPod + A Few thoughts, September 28, 2004

By	Barnaby Dorfman (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

First, this HP iPod is the same as the Apple iPod. There is an Apple store 1 block from my office and I took it in and compared them. The ONLY difference in the unit itself is a smal HP logo on the back.

I bought this simply because it was in stock and the "Apple" version wasn't, no other reason.

I really like my iPod for all the reasons everyone else does..it's elegant, works well, holds a ton of music, etc. That said, here are a few cons I thought I'd mention...

-Using the device as a hard-drive in Windows requires a setting that makes you "eject" each time you disconnect the cable. Seems like an odd extra step.

-USB connection charges the battery, Firewire doesn't.

-There are fewer cases/covers available for this new design without the buttons above the selector wheel. These things scratch so easily you need a case.

-Sometimes the wrong song title appears on the display, even though the file has the correct one in iTunes.

I also have a few issues with iTunes 4.6 for Windows, a key component of the iPod:

-The screen doesn't refresh automatically, showing a different song playing than actually is. Sometimes I get gibberish on the screen.

-The music store is often quite slow to respond to searches or even hangs.

-There's not enough information on the music to make purchase decisions, so I find myself browsing at Amazon and then buying at iTunes.

-Different iTunes songs have different volume levels. I think there's a setting to make them all the same, but I haven't found it.

-It's hard to synch all your music onto multiple computers. I would like to have my music on my iPod, work laptop, and home desktop. Getting them all the same isn't easy.

-You really have to watch pricing on albums. Most albums cost $9.99 and most songs cost 99 cents. If there are less than 10 songs on an album, you still get charged $9.99, even if you could get all the songs individually for less.

-I had one of the original Rio MP3 players and ripped a lot of songs using their software, which combined song-album-artist into one field. iTunes doesn't parse these when importing.

-If I import music from a CD without an Internet connection, iTunes doesn't go to the CDDB later when I do have a connection to get track info.

Despite all the above, I'm really enjoying my iPod, I just wanted to point out a few of the shortcomings in the hopes that Apple would address.

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Difference in Support between HP and Apple iPods - iTunes, September 18, 2004

By	R. Baker "rnbaker" (Madison, WI) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a great product but there is a difference in support between HP and Apple iPods. I was having problems with iTunes not correctly importing my song ID tags (see below) so I called HP. HP told me that it does not support iTunes, and then I called Apple and they told me that they do not support iTunes for HP iPods-Only Apple iPods!!! Apple verifies that you have an Apple iPod by the serial number, which they require for tech support. Further, I believe iTunes is the only application that you can use with the new iPods, so you don't have a choice to use a program that works better for you. What are they thinking??? I hope they correct this issue as soon as possible.

I believe iTunes may need some fine tuning because my song tags were fine on my old iPod (2G), MusicMatch, Windows Explorer, XPlay, etc., but when I imported the songs into iTunes, many of my songs (a couple hundred of them) had extra spaces at the end of artist, album, and track names, and some genres changed among other issues. It looks like iTunes reverted the songs to their original tags from long ago. It took a couple of hours to get them back the way I had them.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another PC addict CONVERTED by the iPod, January 28, 2005

By	J. Caruso "JC" (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I researched mp3 players for months and months, spent hours in electronics stores, read all the Amazon reviews, and never once considered an iPod. Just some sort of Apple prejudice from my formative years, I guess.

Then I ran into a review for one of the myriad OTHER non-Apple mp3 players on Amazon that basically said, "Get an iPod. You'll be happy you did. Apple just does things right." I looked into the iPod, and after my initial sticker shock I realized the reviewer had been right. Instead of completely revamping designs every year or two, or coming out with esoteric new models with new gimmicks attached to them, Apple has spent the past 5 or so years PERFECTING the iPod. It is truly a beautiful machine, from the pristine exterior to the elegant controls and interface. Case in point--if you pull out the headphones while a song is playing, the player automatically PAUSES the song, and lets you restart it when the phones are back in. This is but one example of the many thoughtful features of the iPod that other manufacturers couldn't even get their kludgy machines to do.

There was a learning curve for me, what with converting everything into iTunes and all, but the trouble it took was FAR outweighed by the pleasure of owning such a stunning piece of electronics. I am sure the iPod will only get better as Apple keeps making new models.

That said, I have some advice for anyone thinking of buying one:

A) Research and choose a case for your iPod BEFORE you bring it home. They're beatiful, but extremely prone to scratches. And you'll want to use it immediately. The case I bought (after a month of searching) was the iSkin eVo2, which came with a screen guard and a click wheel guard. There are products out there that will buff out scraches and dull areas out of your iPod, but getting them on there in the first place just feels bad.

B) It's also a good idea to research how to best extend the life of your iPod's battery. There are proven techniques that can help avert premature battery drain, which is apparently a complaint of some iPod users, due to the non-user-replaceable battery.

My only two (extremely minor) complaints are: ONE, with the player in your pocket, you have to put your hand all the way AROUND the player to access the controls. That's in contrast to having some or all controls available on the top of the unit. But, they make a plug-in device that puts supplementary controls on the top of the iPod now, so there you go.

TWO, unlike other media players, iTunes does not display song titles on the task bar. It's a minor pain to have to click over from what you're doing just to figure out who's singing. On the other hand, with the player minimized and set to "On Top Always", you don't have to deal with that, either.

Buy an iPod. I'm serious. I don't give perfect ratings on anything, but truly the iPod is one of few things in this world close to perfection.

Enjoy!