little cat feet

New toy has been acquired

I bought a purple iPod Nano today. 16 GB, of course - 8 would never be enough!

I certainly didn't need another iPod; I already have one of the previous model, plus the one in my iPhone. But purple! How could I resist? In fact, most of the colors are pretty cool; I was also very attracted by the black (which looks more like dark grey to me) and the red. But purple has been my color for a very, very long time, despite my recent flirtation with red, so I had to go with tradition on this.

I'm still loading it up with stuff so I haven't tried to use it yet. It doesn't appear to be much different than all the ones that came before, except for a bigger screen and curved face and back, giving it a football-shaped silhouette from the ends. It also seems to sync faster, though that could be my imagination.

It appears to share one annoying feature with my previous iPod - the screen stays on when it's plugged in to my iMac. This can't be good for the screen; I've always been taught that it will eventually damage the screen if a single image is allowed to "burn in" like that. So I have to eject it from iTunes to turn the screen off. Seems like a bad idea, especially since the previous models had a screen saver that turned off this image after a fairly short time.

I guess this just shows how much of an Apple fan I really am; whatever they come out with, I can find a reason to buy it. It's kind of surprising that I haven't found an excuse to buy an iPod Touch yet...

A picture of the glorious purple color, courtesy of the online Apple store:

New iPods announced today

The truth is, I do not need a new iPod Nano. I carry my iPhone almost everywhere and barely use the Nano I have. However, there is absolutely no question - I will not, under any circumstances, miss out on the opportunity to own a purple iPod. Nano purchase will be made, ASAP.

I also applaud Apple for going back to roughly the same form factor as the last model; it was much more hand-friendly than the current square-ish shape.

Laundry Heaven!

If anyone out there is in need of new laundry appliances, I can tell you that my new Whirlpool Duet set is absolutely da bomb (click on the photo if you want a closer look).

Both machines have a steam feature, which yes, means the dryer has to be hooked up to the water supply. How weird is that??

In the washer the steam feature is supposed to deep clean and remove stains. Meh. I can't see it making that big a difference, really, though I haven't had anything really stained to try it out on. It's just a fabulous washer in every respect, steam or no.

The dryer, however, makes good use of the steam. It has a special cycle which will de-wrinkle clothes that are already dry. For someone like me, who often leaves the clean laundry in the basket for too long, and who refuses to iron, this is a godsend. Clothes that previously would have gone back in the hamper to be rewashed can be returned to wearable condition via 15 minutes in the dryer. Yowza!

Whirlpool, send me an email and I'll tell you where to send the check... :)