I bought a 3rd gen 10gb ipod from the local Apple store on Sunday. Monday I had a chance to really get it open and play with it. Out of the box it worked fine, though, of course, it had no music on it, so it was basically a pretty toy. I charged it for a few hours, then plugged it into my laptop's firewire port. It recognized the drive immediately, and as Windows (running W2k) couldn't read it, I did a quick format as Fat32. After resetting it, Windows and Ephpod recognized it fine.

I let Ephpod do the initialization / folder thingy. I then spent several hours loading mp3s onto my ipod. When I had done enough for a "trial run", I went to the taskbar, and stopped the ipod via the eject/unplug icon, and the ipod screen displayed "Okay to disconnect" with the giant checkmark.

This is where everything started to go wrong.

I plugged it into the power adapter (as my firewire port doesn't do charging), and figured I'd let it sit another few hours, to get the battery back to fully charged, after so much HD activity with loading songs. After about an hour I walked by and looked at it, and it still said "Okay to disconnect", and nothing I could say or do would make it think that it had been disconnected. So I reset it. At that point, I got the Apple logo, followed by the Folder/Exclamation point dreaded screen. It turned itself off, and I left it overnight, plugged in, figuring I'd deal with it the next day.

Well, no harm, no foul. It was Tuesday, and I was home sick. After looking around online, I figured I might as well bite the bullet and do a restore. I still had all my mp3s on my laptop, so it was just a matter of spending another hour or two reloading the music. I installed just about everything off the Apple CD, except the Audible.com stuff. I ran the updater, did the restore, and it finished, saying that I should go plug it into the adapter to let the firmware refresh.

I did the standard taskbar device disconnect thing, and again got the "okay to disconnect" stuck message. It was about this time I noticed the screen had a "dark mark" at the top center of the screen. When'd that happen? I figured I'd give the firmware a chance, despite the fact that it thought it was still connected to happy firewire land. This time I left it for several hours, and when I came back, yes, the message was still there. I was afraid now of getting serious screen burn-in, so I did a reset.

And I got the Apple logo.

I realize now that I should have tried to force it into firewire mode. Instead, in my geeky anger, I reset it again. Mea culpa. And that was the end of my tiny, rebellious ipod. From purchase to clinical death in <48 hours.

I looked around online. I left it charging for 24 hours. No go. I unplugged it and tried to let the battery drain. At first, pressing the buttons did absolutely nothing. Maybe 6 hours later, I could hear its "death rattle"...a faint electronic screeching, at different pitches depending on what buttons I pushed, and an occasional lapse into the squeak and chatter of the hard drive. Repetitive squeaks and chatters. I work in IT support, and I feared it was the all-too-familiar sound of a dead or dying hard drive. But despite the fact that it was making sounds, there was nothing on the display, no backlight, and no drive recognition when I plugged it into my laptop.

This morning, it was deathly quiet; I figured it had finally drained the battery. I left it plugged in all day, hoping that maybe it was the resurrection trick, but no. Still stone dead.

So tonight I'll take it back to the Apple store where I purchased it, and politely ask for a new one in exchange. If I had gotten it to work at all, to the point where I could have listened to *some* music, I'd send it to Apple and wait for a replacement. But I think this has been a lemon since day one. And if they refuse to exchange it, then I may just ask for a refund, and debate if I want to try my luck with a 20gb 2nd gen refurb (yes, I know there are horror stories about those, too, but the touchwheel is a little neurotic, even for my small hands) or just save up another few $$ and go for something like an iRiver or a Rio Karma. (I know it's practically blasphemy to talk about other mp3 devices here, but a friend has one to test, and has nothing but good things to say about the Karma, and I really, really have tried to get this ipod to work)

So that's my tale. I don't expect that anyone will come up with suggestions that I haven't tried, so I guess this is more of a FYI. Chalk it up to another 3g that left the factory floor not quite ready for prime time.

-Maddy

PS - Sorry about the rambling. I tend to do that. Again, mea culpa.