My Ipod Saga

There are a lot of environmental benefits to owning an Ipod. For one, the ground-breaking, tiny hard drive allows Ipod owners to buy hundreds of songs and/or full albums, without buying all of that wasteful plastic that comes with compact disks. In addition, the rechargeable battery lasts a long time, saves a lot of disposable batteries and can be easily charged by my Solar-Powered Backpack . Finally, the Ipod's flexibility allows users to transfer files between computers and store photos and videos (depending on the model), eliminating the need for purchasing multiple devices. Am I missing anything?

Needless to say, I love my Ipod. Which is why I am so pissed off that I dropped it on the ground last week, permanently damaging the internal hard drive. That's right, my Ipod is toast, even though the damage looks so small on the outside. I got a confirmation of that yesterday while visiting the Apple Store in SoHo. The thing is, I never really got to talk to a technician because the wait time was, get this, 9 hours! Still, I was able to talk to a sales person who told me that the problem is common and generally runs $250 to replace the hard drive and get it running again. This price, of course, is about the same as buying a new Ipod and to sweeten the deal, Apple offers a trade-in program which amounts to about 10% off. The old Ipod is then recycled, courtesy of Apple.

So now, I have a dilemma: trade my trusty, slightly dented but internally destroyed Ipod in for a shiny new one, or try to see if I can fix it and avoid wasting it? I'm going to do some investigating into repair techniques before deciding. A friend told me about Ipodmods.com , which I will check out today. Also, this guy made the repair look easy.