The Naked iPod

Hello folks! Right now I'm in a hotel room in London - my work involves extended periods away from home - so over the next few weeks I'll be reporting on my experiences traveling with the multitude of gadgets that usually accompany me.

For this trip, I finally resurrected my old Gen 1 iPod. As much as I like my Shuffle, I do miss not being able to pick tracks at will. So the Shuffle will have a holiday while big iPod takes over the music duties.

The thing that struck me was that despite being over 4 years old, the iPod was in remarkably good nick. Cosmetically, it's pretty scuffed up, but it doesn't mean it's unusable! The kerfuffle over iPod nano scratches was overblown in my opinion.

If you're thinking 'iPod nano? Scratches??' then I'll assume you've just come out of a long term coma. In that case, welcome! It's 2006 and robots are real!

I think my ol' iPod has weathered well having never seen the luxury of a case, sock or balaclava, but I can appreciate if you've just splashed out on a new nano or video iPod and it starts to get marked early on, you'd be miffed.

The best advice I can offer is to never, ever under any circumstances - threat of forced viewing of Celebrity Big Brother, even - put your iPod in a pocket with keys or loose change. Never. Do it once and your iPod will be scarred for life. Scarred I tell you! Not to mention the mental scarring you receive when, fumbling for your house keys, your fingers touch upon... your precious iPod. Aaarghh! Kill me now! (Readers may have gathered that the author of this piece has undergone such a traumatic experience).

Mind you, not as bad as - having been very careful protecting it's surfaces with a tea-towel - finding a bloody great scratch on the casing of the iBook while undertaking a complicated drive-ectomy! To add insult to injury, it was right across the translucent Apple logo in the lid! I'm still paying the rehab bill!

Ok, it's time for, er, teaser time: I recently took delivery of a Fossil Wrist PDA (a dream gadget) - a full write up will appear here soon so bookmark me already! Meh!

Also coming up: How playing PSP on the Tube can make you vom.

Call back soon for more gadget goodness!