I was rather sad last night when my iPod nano died – I was plugging it into various things (TV, old stereo) trying to come up with a home stereo solution that didn’t involve me spending more money. Instead I got a static discharge off the tv ports and the nano went dead.

I’d really grown attached to the little guy (and was even getting used to spending $10 a fortnight for a new pair of headphones), but buying a new one here is prohibitively expensive (RRP $429), so today I had a look around for cheaper alternatives, and while sort of impressed realized I couldn’t stand to give up two things: 1) the click wheel which makes navigation so fast, and 2) iTunes integration, specifically smart playlists– The idea of manually selecting music files from Explorer and dragging them to a device seems absurd now, I simply couldn’t be bothered.

Then RichardN informed me that it might be worth trying a hardware reset… (click hold on-off, then press down menu + select for 10 seconds) and joy! My tiny buddy is back from the dead. Hooray!

And so, since we’re on the subject, here are some further thoughts & impressions about iPods:

• Getting a foofpod for it means you needn’t screw around with the hold button and can still switch tracks when the thing is in your pocket, without accidentally changing the volume
• The headphones that came standard are pretty ordinary sound quality, and developed quite a buzz in the right ear, but somehow they continue to work to matter how many times I catch the cable on a door handle. They really do seem indestructable in that regard (so are always my fallback position when my newer ones die completely, which they do with depressing regularity)
• There needs to be a way of switching in and out of shufflemode without changing the current song… ie if I randomly come across a song from an artist I haven’t heard in a while, I’d really like it if I could hit a button to continue listening to that artist’s songs (if there is a way of doing this please inform me in the comments a non-sarcastic way).
• For some reason it lets me play music without headphones plugged in, which means I have flattened the battery a few times by accidently pressing play.

NB To assuage my temporary grief, I did go buy myself a mini espresso machine, to console myself for a day without music. First cup tasted blech, second is already getting close to how I like it. So there’ll be no more plunger coffee for me (what I know as the coffee plunger is also known as the French Press… much more fancy sounding!)