I can't listen to music that skips. iPods skip. They shouldn't have gotten out of beta testing like that, but they have been generating hits to Apple "How to troubleshoot skipping" web pages for five years now.

The new hard-drive free iPods claim to be skip free, but one has to wonder why they got so famous based on a buggy product that does.

Since I started listening to a transistor radio in 1968, I have longed for the iPod - I just didn't know it.

I am such a music freak. I'm just wired to get a absolute rush when I hear something that moves me. But I'm not necessarily into the artist - I'm into the song. Certainly with some artists I'll like everything they do, but for nearly 30 years I'd have to buy an album just to get to one song, and some rarities continually eluded me.

When I started using the web at work in the mid-90s, I almost immediately knew that someone was going to make it so that we could download one song at a time and do away with all those expensive, superfluous tracks. I couldn't wait. And lo and behold, along came iTunes. I blissfully started building my own personal radio station.

When I decided this year that I absolutely had to get serious about exercise, I "invested" in a 1GB iPod Shuffle. And without hyperbole, I say it has changed my life. It is the perfect combination of a personal music collection and radio - random, but you know you'll always hear something you love.

I used to have to force myself - and not always successfully - to get out and walk for half an hour. Now I'm out there at least an hour every day, and sometimes I can't resist - can't resist! - going even longer.

So yes, meeting a decades-old longing and solving a persistent and detrimental motivation problem - I would say the iPod is perfect. Yay, Apple!

Like other correspondents, I find that smart playlists offer one corrective to excessive repeats. The notes field can also be used for informal tags, which helps.

As for fidelity, if I had a couple of hours every day to sit in front of a good system with a turntable playing 180g imports, well sure I'd do that. But I don't, and having breadth of choice is a nice substitute, especially when I can switch between music and BBC radio podcasts while sitting in traffic. (Satellite radio would be no help, they don't carry FiveLive for a start...)

Two things I don't identify with; I don't download much music (thanks, DRM) and I avoid using it too much at work; not because I couldn't enjoy it, but because having used some variant of portable music player with headphones since 1980, inter alia, my hearing isn't what it might be, and I'm 35.

Not that you should care what I think or do, I'm not a columnist ; )

A lot of the backlash against the iPod and digital music in general reminds me of the negative reaction given by cinephiles to video stores in the 1980s: Suddenly, any gawk-eyed adolescent could educate him- or herself on the history of movies by renting videocassettes without ever setting foot in a smelly arthouse theater, belonging to a college film society, or subscribing to Cahiers du Cinema. Even if you lived in Bumfuck, North Dakota, you could probably find a copy of The Magnificient Ambersons or Seven Samurai on the back shelves of the local mom'n'pop video store (or even its soulless corporate equivalent).

With iTunes and other digital music stores, average listeners can expand their understanding and appreciation of music in the comfort and privacy of their homes, without spending hours roaming through the local big box retailer or indie record shop (assuming, of course, one exists in your town). When I first bought my iPod, I deliberately avoided the iTunes store. (And I won't argue with folks who suggest that there are plenty of good reasons not to buy music online.) Gradually, however, I started buying individual tracks of songs I liked but would never buy as part of the cost of an entire CD. Within a few months I was buying full albums, mostly by artists I probably never would have bought in my pre-iPod life. Three years ago I would've never imagined myself as the kind of person who'd listen to MF Doom, Pavement, or Willie Nelson (let alone all three within the space of fifteen minutes), but I am now. I'm also much more likely to listen to individual albums all the way through, which is something that I almost never did in the Walkman era (and puts the lie to the notion that MP3 players make their users jittery and indecisive).

Oh, and finally: I agree completely with the poster who observes that it's impossible to catch ADD or OCD from your iPod. There is a tremendous gap between not being able to go outside because of crippling irrational fears and not being able to put together a killer roots-rock playlist to listen to on the Muni.

Shut the fuck up already. iPods, 9/11, blah blah blah.

I wish we could just go back in time when AOL didn't join the Internet. Back when there was sanity and every other joe schmoe wasn't some self-important blowhard or pundit. Back when you got your teeth kicked in because you used a a computer. Back when a nerd was still a nerd.

Fucking trendwhores make me puke.

You seem to take to task that the main problem with the ipod is that you have a low attention span and tend to listen to the same thing over and over.

Well I am one of those music snobs whos CD collection was revered by most to be a library of music. But somewhere along the way I just had too damn much music. I fell prey to listening to the same thing over and over.

When I finally got my ipod, and what must have been months of digitizing my CD's, I was suprizingly reunited with my music collection. I keep it on shuffle mostly and after 2 years, I am happy to say that I often get the "oh yeah" joy when a song comes on that I have completly fogot about.

Also, everyone has those impulse buy CD's that had one good song and the rest just didn't jive at the time. Well, I find that I am more likely to give the songs a chance since I know it will only be for one track and I don't have to swich out the CD. My hesitation for trying the unfarmiliar fades away.

Long live the ipod.