Dear reader:
I decided to create this blog because I want to go public with my frustration at the way Best Buy is handling a defective product. A defective product which did something dreadful:
It KILLED my iPOD!!! Augh!!!
Ok, here's the history:
On January 5, 2005, I bought my first (and so far only) iPod, a 4th Gen 20 GB sweetie. Over the following months, I became more and more addicted to this beautiful piece of design. Not only did it look really nice and play music really well, it had the best user interface I could imagine for this kind of device. And iTunes was just as great. My family and I quickly ripped all our CD's and shared our songs, and soon I'd filled up the iPod with music.
Then I discovered Podcasts, and got even more addicted. Instead of having to listen to boring, infuriating, repetitive bull about politicians like George Bush and other terrorists, I could listen to stuff I wanted to listen to. Like Elke and KC talking about The L Word, or the wonderful Radio 5 Live program about Formula One racing called Checquered Flag, or any one of a host of public radio programs that never mention politics or the Middle East.
I was hooked. I listened to my iPod for hours every day. In my car, in the living room, even in bed before I went to sleep.
Through it all, my iPod worked perfectly.
Until, that is, a fateful day in March 2007, when I decided to buy my beloved iPod a little present.
For a long time I'd been wanting a nice cradle to make it easier to sync and charge it, since my use of podcasts and of nested playlists (dependant on play counts and most recent play dates for songs to keep my music fresh) required daily syncing.
So on March 16, 2007, I was standing innocently in my local Best Buy, looking at iPod accessories, and I decided to take the plunge. They had racks full of a really clever-looking docking system, which had little inserts you could snap in and out so the dock would fit any iPod from a 4G to a Nano to a 5G. That way, if and when I got a new iPod, I thought, I'll still be able to use the dock.
I took the dock home and I loved it. It was great, plugged into the USB 2 port in my laptop. I could play music or a podcast through my computer speakers and stop and start it or adjust the volume from my chair across the room.
Then I took it into my bedroom and plugged it into the USB power supply that came with the docking system.
Oh, if I had the ability to do it over!
I put the dock on my bedside table, and plugged the iPod into it. I plugged my powered speakers into the dock. Then I plugged the Dynex USB cable into the dock and the other end into the Dynex wall wart.
As soon as I plugged the wall wart into the wall, the speakers started making a sharp clicking sound, about once a second. I looked at the dock and the light on the front of it was flashing at the same rate, starting out bright in unison with the click, and decaying to nothing just before the next click/bright cycle.
Clearly something was wrong, so I unplugged everything and took the iPod back to my computer and plugged it back into the USB port there.
It quickly got really hot, and soon gave a low battery signal. I got out the Firewire wall wart and cable that came with the iPod, and tried charging it with that. No dice. Hot again. Hotter and hotter, and eventually the display started going dark from the heat.
I ordered a new battery from Kokopelli Music and installed it (it came with installation tools and instructions; it was really easy to replace the battery by following Kokopelli's instructions).
Ah! Back to normal. I could sync and play music. Except the iPod kept getting hot whenever it had power applied to it, either from the computer or its original Firewire wall wart. And by morning, the new battery was dead. Attempts to charge it just created more heat and more trouble.
I had to face an unpleasant fact: the Dynex docking system had killed my iPod's charging circuit.
More on this saga in the next installment.
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