Getting Closer to the End

While I was working yesterday I heard my music cut out for a second and then jump to the next song.  Paranoid I reached over to my faithful iPod and clicked back to the song was just playing.  It cut out again in the same place and then jumped to the next song.  I was bothered, but I was content to listen to the song that was currently playing.  It played perfectly.  The next song stopped around the halfway mark and jumped to the one after that.  There was a sick feeling in my gut. 

I’ve been teased before at work because my iPod has been with me for so long.  Every day when I get into work I grab a cup of coffee and I hook my iPod up to a set of speakers.  My 40 gig, 4^th generation iPod.  The music player is almost 9 years old now and has close to 7,000 songs on it.  Every once in a while I get asked why I haven’t upgraded to a new one, but I never saw the point.  The classic was doing everything I needed it to.  Now that’s starting to change.  I’d say 1 in every 10 songs played is choppy or skips.  I can manage but I know the end is coming.

The real killer for me is that there isn’t a good replacement for what I have.  I got almost 9 years out of this one so I have no problem sticking with Apple, but they aren’t making it easy for me.  I have almost 30GB of music.  I don’t need to run apps or watch movies; I just want a music player.  I’d need 2 iPod nanos to carry what I have now.  At 150 each that isn’t going to happen.  The 32Gb iPod touch costs 300 too.  Besides that the touch is full of things I don’t need.  That brings us back to the iPod Classic.

The Classic.  The device that launched the line only comes in one version now, the 160GB.  That’s 5 times more than I really need and it’s 250 dollars.  Sure if it lasts 10 years that 250 will seem like a great deal, but right now it seems like a lot of money for more storage than I need.  I’m not going to do anything while my old Classic still functions, but the whole idea of it no longer working just makes me sad.