After some abuse, my iPod (4th generation, refurb bought cheap) has died and is not economical to repair.

I have ordered this setup (a 2nd generation 2GB Shuffle) to replace it after realizing that all I ever do with an iPod is listen to audiobooks and even just 2 GB will hold half a dozen books. ["Just 2 GB." I remember how exciting it was to upgrade our work computer from 80 to 160 MB for just $1200. Hell, the first computer I ever used had an $8,000 hard drive that had five MB of storage.]

I haven't used a shuffle, but no doubt some of you have, so perhaps can answer a few rather generic questions.

1) Does it use a standard headphone jack? That is, can I use SWMBO's noise-canceling Bose headphones with it sometimes?

2) Without a display, how do I navigate to a specific track?

3) Can it remember my playlist location on power-up the way a "regular" iPod does?

4) Will it really give 12 hours of battery life? (Of course it won't, but how much could I really expect?

5) Can an iPod Shuffle battery be replaced by mere mortals, or is that a specialist job?

That's all I can think of at the moment.

tanstaafl.

Yes with some limitations. The volume controls are actually on the headphone lead and you need to get a special adapter which I'm not sure has been released yet.


Skip skip skip skip skip


It should do.


You need to be able to solder to replace the battery. There are guides online that show you how to open it.

The second gen shuffle has buttons on the unit itself. You're thinking of the newest Shuffle, which is the third generation.

In that case, it's fortunate that when I rip audiobooks from CDs I concatenate the tracks. For some reason I fail to comprehend, the producers of the audiobooks seem to think it is better to have lots of very short tracks, making it easier to skip to the right one. But some of them have track lengths so short (less than a minute in some cases) that a book may have more than 1500 tracks!

I concatenate them to one track per CD (an interesting process in itself... I used to do it C:> copy /b track01.mp3+track02.mp3+...+track99.mp3 outfile.mp3 until I figured out it was easier to just go c:> copy /b *.mp3 outfile.mp3. Surprisingly, the process works better if I don't remove the tags from the *.mp3 files before concatenation. If I do remove the tags first (with MP3 Tag Studio) I frequently get pops on playback where the files were joined together.

tanstaafl.

Oops my bad! Didn't notice it was a 2nd gen shuffle. In that case then its fine. You can click the buttons on the unit with whatever headphones you want

I've got a 2nd generation iPod Shuffle that I use on the walk to work, so I can answer these:

1. Yes.
2. Skip, skip, skip.
3. Yes.
4. Maybe not 12 hours, but I charge mine once a week or so. Hasn't run out in the middle of my walk to work yet.
5. No idea. They're so cheap, I'd just replace the iPod.