Tiny iPod is top of the pops

By ELINORE WELLWOOD

First there was the ghetto blaster that made you droop under its weight on your shoulder, and the little Walkman that let you have music wherever you went.

Now, there's the iPod. This tiny, portable digital music player is the biggest leap since we could first leave the house and keep singing along to Abba.

It is this year's must-have gadget, topping hottest product lists in the developed world.

Depending on your point of view, one of the best, or worst, things about it is the way you can enlarge your music collection dramatically and quickly. Although the system is supposed to prevent people from stealing songs, you can easily use it to copy your mate's music collection.

The iPod, which costs between just under $500 and $870, is a bit bigger than a stack of playing cards, and not quite as thick. It's a computer hard drive in disguise.

Instead of making the listener carry tapes or CDs or discs, it stores 5000 or more songs, depending on which version you own, and has eight hours' playing time on its battery.

You load your CDs on to your desktop computer, then connect to the iPod to transfer songs or your Italian lessons, clip it to your belt and away you go with headphones.

Or you connect speakers and have it on your desk. Or you plug it into your stereo, or clip on a gadget that transfers the signal to FM and lets you play it over your car radio.

Anything since the Walkman had flaws: the CD Walkman would bounce if you tried jogging with it; the Discman was always just a step towards a computer-type music player.

The iPod has been available for two years overseas, and hot for the past four months or so. Although two weeks ago Apple sold its two millionth iPod, in New Zealand the craze is just taking off.

Renaissance Corporation, which imports them into New Zealand, cannot keep up with demand. The company has brought in 500 a month, but most are sold before they enter the country.

"We just can't get enough of them," says managing director Paul Johnston.

At the moment, they are white. But the mini, coloured version just introduced in the United States will be here in April. It is cheaper and aimed at people who want to store only up to 2000 songs.

In the US and London, Mr Johnston says, DJs run the whole night switching between two iPods. People use them for parties, language lessons, jogging, or on public transport. He says he has loaded nearly 4000 songs from his CD collection.

"I have my favourites list, then music of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s and classical, then I might have my most-played songs.

"If you want all your Celine Dion in one place you can put them in one folder. I have two children who love dancing - jazz, ballet, tap - so their music is all in folders for them."

Users can buy separate songs over the internet or arrange their favourite playlist into an album and burn a CD.

The iPod is designed to synchronise with only one computer at a time. In theory, this means that if you try to load music off your friend's computer, it will make you delete all the music from your own computer already on the iPod.

And you are not supposed to be able to download your friend's music on to your computer from your iPod.

In practice, that doesn't work if you have any idea at all about computers and how to get around such things, as a trial of the iPod this week proved.

People who use a Walkman or its offspring a lot, such as joggers, would get their money's worth out of the iPod.

People who do not listen to the radio, backpackers, long-distance drivers who constantly lose radio reception and those who normally carry around bags of CDs, would also get good use out of it.

For most of the rest of us who do not like being cut off from the world by our headphones or who already use computers for parties or personalised CDs, it's another expensive gadget that would be fun and sexy to own but may just end up gathering dust.