McBeen.com

I had quite a little scare here that I forgot to write about. I bought an iPod photo last month for my trip to china in august. Unfortunately for me… the battery started acting up two weeks after I got it… I started to freak out thinking that maybe my car adaptor was frying batteries or something. It would charge ok, but the charge would only last for 6-8 hours, and if I left it over night it would be deadthe next day. I sent it off to Apple to see what they could come up with. I was quite concerned when the dispatch showed up as returning the original item. But the pack arrived today, and my ipod was inside, fully charged. Yea! Maybe I messed up the charging profile or something. I’m just happy to have my iPod back!

So… My new iPod is on the way. I have been watching the repair site, and was suprised to see that Apple was actually manufacturing me a new iPod. Cool. Dell could learn a lot from this.

I’ll start this off with some background. I have owned three iPods. I bought the first of the first gen when they came out. I was still happy with it when my wife go it in the divorce. The battery was still working well after almost three years of use. The nthen got a shuffle and then a second gen mini a few months back. The shuffle was great, but it did not have an internal clock…

The mini has been a really nice gadget. The battery life has been great, the screen is wonderful, the size is acceptable. Then something happened. I still don’t really understand what. On tuesday, the unit stopped “charging”. I don’t know how else to describe it. I left the thing plugged in all night, but it never showed a complete charge. The next morning, I started listening, and got a low battery error. I plugged it back in, worrying that my battery might have died. It still never showed a complete charge. The next day, I took it and reset it after it shut down. The battery indicator showed empty, but then slowly started to fill, and then actually got up to almost 70%. After a few hours of playback, it again showed the low battery error. I reset it again, and am still listening to it without charging tonight, four days later. The battery has showed empty for at least the last six hours of play time. I fugure I’ll plug it in to charge after it will no longer boot.

It almost looks like there is a history function that got confused. I do have a charging dock in my car that it gets dropped into regularly. I’ll be in touch.

BTW, Wow Wee, the makers of the Robosapien sent me a new remote! goodie! Nice to have our little buddy mobile again!