| 1GB Apple iPod Shuffle
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Operation:
On the back of the unit you'll find a completely smooth three-position switch. This switch controls the power and two play modes, sequential and shuffle. Some may complain that the switch doesn't have a ridge or something to make its use easier to use but I am actually happy it doesn't. Without any texture the switch doesn't accidentally get changed while you slide it in you pocket. Also on the back you'll find one of the two LED's, this one indicates battery charge when the button is depressed. Green indicates good charge, yellow is low and red indicates empty. In my real world use I found the iPod lasted well past the 12 hours quoted, I got closer to 16. Though I will say that the indicator light is not as useful as I would like, after 12 hours it was still green, sometime after 14 it went yellow and finally red when it stopped. I was hoping for a more progressive scale.
On the front you'll find the control ring that is very intuitive. In the center you have your play/pause and hold button. Top increases volume and bottom decreases, side buttons skip forward and back through tracks or if you hold the button fast forward or rewind. All buttons have positive detents and are also accompanied by the flash of the LED acknowledging your command.
 
The ear buds included appear to be the same provided with the original iPod and sound very good but aren't real comfortable for me, I find the ear buds supplied with my MyFi to be more comfortable and they stay in place better. Sound wise they are about equal, both produce a rather flat reproduction at most listening volumes. Bass is acceptable considering the size of the ear buds but they do start to sound a little bright at higher volumes. Speaking of volume, this little thing can crank! I was not able to keep the ear buds on at full volume. Since headphones are always a trade off I connected the iPod to my Onkyo HT receiver that drives a Polk Audio speaker system. Using this setup I was not able to tell the difference between the iPod and the original recordings from the computer.
The iPod Shuffle can also be used as a portable flash drive to transfer files between computers. In fact the iTunes software allows you to set how much of the drive you want reserved for file transfers (see below). The main problem is you lose some capacity to carry music. As you can see in the screen capture below, allocating 103MB for storage decreases the song count from 235 to 215. What I found to be more convenient was to leave the check box enabled but the storage size set to 0MB. This way the entire 1GB is available for music, but it also enables browsing of the iPod as an external drive. By doing this you can delete a few songs or a folder of songs to make room for the files you need to move. I tried this several times and have not found any problems with corrupted files or any playback issues. The biggest drawback to using the iPod as a flash drive is the speed. As mentioned earlier it is quite slow. SiSoft Sandra benches indicate a combined index of 603 operations/min and an endurance factor of 36.6. Additional tests of transfer rates failed.
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