How to get a 40Gb iPod for £50 (sort of)…
Last night I finally gave up on my Jukebox, I took it back to Dixons and
told them that it was broken. I had charged the battery for 12 hours and it
only managed to play for two and a half hours, considering the packaging claims
eight hours playback I considered this broken. The unit had never managed eight
hours, probably about five tops but I didn’t think this would help my case so I
didn’t mention it. The assistant who served me was really helpful and
understanding, first he offered me a replacement unit, I declined. Then he
offered me the next model up, I declined. I explained that I would never buy a
product from Archos again, he
grinned and said that I wasn’t the first person to return one. I asked if they
sold iPods and he said that they did but they’d only ever had three in stock and
they’d sold them within in half an hour of opening the store. So I asked if a
credit note would be redeemable at PC World and he said that was fine. I got a
credit note for £349.
This morning I rang PC World to check
availabilty on iPods. There were 5 in my local(ish) store. So this morning I
went to PC World, again (sorry Paul) and exchanged the credit note and fifty of
my finest english pounds for a beautifully crafted, small and perfectly formed
block of the smoothest and shiniest plastic and metal money can buy. I got it
home and immediately plugged it all in and slipped the iPod into the dock.
iTunes opened and asked me what I wanted to name my iPod and if I wanted it to
update automatically in future. Then it took about fifteen minutes to copy just
over 2000 tracks to it and I saw that it was good. Then I copied a bootable
clone of my powerbook to it for good measure, just in case.