I recently was getting fed up with my current web hosting provider (Vizaweb) and their complete lack of good customer service, but let’s leave them out of this article. At one point after Vizaweb decided to not give me the answer I was looking for on tech support, I decided to try another hosting provider.

Naturally, after being screwed over by so many of these cheap resellers who probably run their “business” out of their parents’ basements, I wanted to try a provider who might actually have some integrity (if anything like that even exists in cheap web hosts).

I had heard good things about GoDaddy.com’s hosting, so I decided to give them a try.

I opted for a similarly-priced package that offered comparible features to my previous host, a 2GB space, 100GB bandwidth package GoDaddy offers for $9.99 a month. Sounded good. The fact that most of my domains were registered on GoDaddy made me think it would be even easier to keep all my internet stuff in one place.

Setup was very easy, almost too easy. I wondered where the CPanel tool was I am used to using on most of my webhosts. They don’t offer CPanel and instead use their own needlessly confusing configuration tools which were scattered all over the site. I eventually found my way into configuring the 2 MySQL databases I needed to get my blog and image gallery (and this site) going. CPanel was much easier, though. GoDaddy included 10 MySQL databases with the account.

Then I found the section where I set up my email accounts… Apparently GoDaddy feels that a $10 hosting account doesn’t include email accounts with unlimited space (up to the point your server is full). They want you to fork over an additional amount of money per year for larger email accounts. They did give me “up to 500″ 10MB email accounts with the service. 10MB? Sheesh. Not sure if these guys have been watching webmail providers these days but GMail offers 2GB storage per user for free.

So I started using this new service and after a few bumps I was liking it quite a bit, the speed was good, and the tools (albeit unconventional) still allowed me to accomplish what I needed to do for the most part.

Then I ran into a problem with the email server and their technical support that made the relationship turn sour very quickly.

Occasionally my friends and I exchange links in email from spam messages or images on spam websites that we find particularly funny. My mail server typically lets me do this since I am in control of what gets blocked or not in CPanel. I found out after using GoDaddy’s contracted-out hosting and mail service that they have blacklists in place for certain domains which may be spammers/phishers. Sounds like a good policy, right? Except the email I was sent just had a single link in it that was a jpeg file. Nothing spammed. This is the worst kind of spam filter you can possibly implement. Not only did it bounce the message back to my friend with a very vague reply, I found out after an excruciating discussion with their tech support department that I did not have any control over incoming mail blocks. I did not have their “spam filter” enabled for this account, and it was bouncing messages I gave no authorization to bounce, let alone mark as spam.

Needless to say after hearing that from tech support for “SecureServer” (who I guess GoDaddy oversells their bandwidth and hosting service from), I cancelled the GoDaddy account and went back to my old provider, even with the issues I was having with Vizaweb, I’d rather have control over my domain than have some stupid 3rd party screening mail without my permission with some primitive spam blocking tool that doesn’t even use bayesian filtering.

I’d have to say – if you don’t really care about your email service, their $3.95 package may be right for a small domain name with a few free email accounts, but other than that I’d recommend looking elsewhere for service. Their domain name registration is still the best place on the internet but the hosting packages need work.

I have to admit. I’ve always been a hater of the iPod mini. Ever since the original 4GB model came out, I’ve always said the only people who buy them are people who aren’t real music fans. They load it up with their favorite Steve Miller Band album and rock out to it at the gym, and it serves their purpose just fine. People who like singles should love the mini. I however really pride myself on having a huge variety of music to listen to, somewhere in the area of 450-500 albums and growing by something like 2-3 a week these days.

But for some reason, I felt like I should try something new. I had an iPod Photo 60GB before this, the biggest iPod apple makes. I figured I needed my entire music library available to me at the touch of a button wherever I went… Pretty rational idea, no? Well, it got to be sort of tedious. I mainly was using it hooked up to a computer at my office as a standard hard drive. The iPod’s interface isn’t very good for navigating through that many albums at once. The way iPods deal with “Various Artists” albums (like many of my trance and house mix CDs) is pathetic, scattering my albums out to an unreadable mess of Artists who only have 1 or 2 tracks under their name. Very uncool.

Well, to solve this conundrum, I decided I should look for a really cheap USB 2.0 or Firewire hard drive in the local CompUSA advertisement, and use that for my music library at the office, which would allow me to sell the pricey and gigantic iPod Photo and buy something a little less expensive and a little smaller. I found a 80GB USB 2.0 hard drive for $50 after rebate at CompUSA and sold my iPod Photo 60GB after only 4 months of use.

Now, I have to say, this was an impulse purchase. You will find out reading this site that my entire tech gadget purchasing habit is not entirely thought out in advance (wow, surprising!). I like to buy things without thinking about whether they may actually have use in my day to day existence on this planet. On the plus side, it affords me the ability to rant to you about it on this webpage, which is nice.

Back to the iPod… So I purchased the Silver 6GB iPod Mini from the king of all impulse purchase stores, which is PCconnection.com (yes, their motto is everything overnight – even if you order it at 1 AM in your boxers). I knew full well this would show up the next day at work, so I ordered one. It showed up the next day at work in it’s incredibly tiny little box.

Going back to the color, I purchased the Silver one. Now, I guess If you’re a girl, you will buy pink (mmm, gender roles rock, don’t they?) – They eliminated the “Gold” color for the new model (I have no idea why). The two other colors left are some facsimile of Blue, which is OK with me, and the burn-your-retina Green model.

The first thing I noticed on this iPod mini versus the old one was the lack of any “extras” in the box. It seems like Apple is getting skimpier and skimpier about extras.

Here’s what came in the box:
- The iPod
- An insanely short, 4′ USB cable (Apple used to include a 6′ cable)
- The stock Apple white headphones, which make even the bassiest music sound like it’s being played on AM radio.
- Some software CDs that aren’t useful at all (honestly, who doesn’t have iTunes installed by now?)
- Some white thing resembling a belt clip that I promise I will never use

Apple apparently doesn’t think anyone needs to charge the iPod outside of a computer, and does not include an AC adapter with the unit anymore. They also don’t include a FireWire cable if you wanted to use an extra one you may have had laying around, either. Big minus, but I guess I’ll live with it.

Overall the small case design was impressive. Apple knows how to make products desirable, even the packaging is smaller than the “Cube” iPod boxes we’ve been used to for years now. Very small and light. It made me feel like I was opening a device from the future! If I could rate boxes, I would give this box a 10/10.

The actual iPod itself has a lot to it. I was able to fit approximately 65-70 full albums on the unit encoded in the LAME –alt preset standard MP3 codec. These MP3s average around 192kbps in variable bitrates. The transfer rate from the computer to the mini’s microdrive is much slower than to a regular hard drive-based iPod, probably about 2-3x slower, but it doesn’t make that much of a difference since this unit’s microdrive takes less time to fill up. Copying takes approximately 20-30 seconds per album.

The interface on the iPod itself is the best interface out there for a MP3 player. The clickwheel is a godsend, and having scroll capability and click capability in one unit is excellent. I found the touch sensitivity on my iPod mini to be semi-lacking and had to sometimes blow on the wheel a bit to heat it up so it would respond. I don’t think I have morbidly cold hands or anything, so I’m not sure why this model is not as responsive in that department. The aluminum case is tough and I found (unlike other iPods) that it does not require a separate protective case if handled right. I hope the full-size iPods move to the aluminum case eventually.

The screen is typical and similar to the larger monochrome iPod units. The only differences are that the size of it is smaller, the font is smaller, and a big drawback in my opinion, which is that the title of the Album apparently is not important enough to display on the screen like it was on all the other iPod models. I can live without it, but I swear they could have squeezed that in if they wanted to. Maybe in a future firmware update.

The sound quality is excellent, I usually use mine in my car through an Aux-in headphone jack on my Aiwa CD receiver. I do not have any complaints about the iPod’s sound, except between tracks there is no “gapless” feature (come on Apple, you’ve had 4 years to iron this one out!) This completely wrecks my mix CDs but I’ve become accustomed to the glitch between tracks. I just wonder how difficult this would even be for Apple to implement. It works just fine in Winamp.

In summary, the iPod mini 6GB works great if you either don’t have a whole lot of music, or only care about listening to the “current” stuff you’re digging and have supplementary storage elsewhere. The price is right (at $249 USD) for something cheaper than the unnecessary iPod Photo.

Pros:
- Great battery life! (Apple claims 18 hours)
- Small form factor
- Tough case
- Good backlight
- Great sound quality (with good headphones)

Cons:
- 6GB may not be enough for everyone
- Extremely short USB cable (4′)
- No firewire cable
- No AC adapter
- Included earbud headphones are garbage (with good eBay resale value!)

This site is a little idea of mine I’ve been throwing around in my head for a few months and I finally decided to get off my butt and create it.

I’ve always wanted a place where I can publically review all the tech gadgets I cycle through on a weekly basis. I’m always buying and selling things and testing new things out and feel like I could write a book on just the things I’ve tried in the last year alone.

I’m hoping this site will be useful to random web users stumbling across a search term on google, maybe I can persuade just one person not to waste their money on the 14″ model of the Apple iBook and make them try the 12″ instead. If I change just that one person’s mind, it makes the site completely worth it.

I am hoping to write many reviews and possibly have others contribute reviews as well. The mission of this site is to make a repository of consumer level, honest opinions of tech gadgets and software that other people can read and be warned (or be awed) into getting the product or software I’m trying out.

No one pays for this site and I do not get any free tech gadgets, it’s all been stuff I’ve just bought because I love to try out the newest stuff. Hopefully I can write pretty well about it, too.

As far as the site design is concerned, this is a default Drupal template and I’ll look for another one when I get a chance. I just want to get started writing content.

Thanks!
Dan
Site Admin