Of iPods and iMacs

Actually it is just one iPod and one iMac.

My iPod is on the fritz. The click wheel is not working correctly. Most of the time it doesn't work at all. I can get to the main menu. I can pause a song. I can skip forwards and backwards and that's about it. I can't scroll down any of the menus at all. I can't change the volume. But sometimes I can get it to work. I'm at a loss as to what happened.

I did take it with me when I went on my bike ride on Sunday. I thought maybe it got a little damp from the ride. So I set it out in front of a window and thought it would dry out. If it did, that didn't make any difference. I reset the iPod. After I did that for a little while it seemed to work correctly. But only for a little while. I plugged it into my computer. It seemed to work after that. I thought I'd leave well enough along and deal with it in the morning.

Morning comes and the click wheel won't move at all. I was able to listen to some music but the volume was very loud. On the metro platform going to work for a few moments, I got the click wheel to work. I got it to work long enough to get the volume down to an acceptable level. Since then it has not worked at all.

I went to the Apple web site on Sunday. Looked through it. I found in the forums that many people had similar problems. There really didn't seem to be a definitive answer on how to solve the problem. I've reset the iPod on numerous occasions. I made sure the operating system was up to date. Now I'm in the process of restoring the iPod. This essential wipes the hard drive and restores the factory setting it came with. Now my music is loading on to it. It takes a long time because most of my music is on an external hard drive and my machine is slow to begin with.

This brings me to the iMac. I went to the Apple store in Tyson's on Saturday. I asked the questions I had. They can upgrade the RAM on the machine but any more customization I have to go to the store site and order it from there. I did find out I don't need to get the fancy video card.Also that I can hook up my old machine and when I start the new iMac it will ask me if I want to transfer any data. That will make things much simpler.

I'm going to keep my music files on the external hard drive. I plan to get most everything else off of that. Now I have to figure out the specs of the new machine. I'm going to get the 24 inch screen (yes size does matter). I'm going to go with the 2.8Ghz processor. I plan to max out the RAM to 4GB and I think I'm going to get the terabyte hard drive. (Yes size does indeed matter.) It is only an extra $300. I figure that's a couple of months saving my ones and fives (I went to the bank with $255 from that fund today). Ball park price before taxes is $2,300.

There is one last thing I want to find out and that is if I can order the machine from the on line Apple store but have it delivered to the store in Tyson's.

I think I'll be getting it in the next couple of weeks. As for the iPod if I can continue to get it to play I'll use it. Supposedly there is a new generation of iPods coming down the pike in the not too distant future. I plan on waiting to see what they are before I buy anything. Once that happens the iPods that are out now will probably come down in price.