[The Godfather]

It's been brought to me that one of the critical times when I want to listen to my music is at 7:00AM as I am driving to work. The Tavarua MP3-CD player, if left overnight in the vehicle, will not play (condensation, electronics, rotating parts, I'don't know why). Only after 10 minutes of driving and warming up the car, the player would see the files in the CDROM. I live in western WA state.

Any thought of how the iPod will do in the same conditions? Anybody tried that yet?

[bobette]

Well, when I get my iPod, I certainly won't leave it overnight in the car!



Seriously (and I understand the situation cuz I'm in Canada) I wouldn't leave such a beautiful piece of technology in the car overnight for the following reasons:

1) Battery life will diminish drastically in sub-freezing temps;

2) The variants of temps (from the sub-zero cold-start attempts to your car heater's blasting hot air) can't be good, especially condensation-wise. Durability-wise, the iPod isn't exactly tested in harsh conditions (another sunny day in Cupertino)

3) man, if I see an iPod lying around a parked car, I might be tempted!

I'd keep it inside my jacket and wait till the car goes over freezing temp before operating it. Or leave it in a warm mitten or something, insulating it externally, with the car adapter wire sticking out.

[Todd Madson]

Just keep it in your coat pocket and that way it will stay warmer than if it was left in a car being a tempting target for thieves.

I can see why leaving a CD player in the car would be a no brainer since
they're bulky, have wires and other stuff to deal with.

In my case, a small MP3 player fits perfectly in a certain pocket of
my leather jacket.

[Ron Goodman]

The technical specs I saw gave an upper altitude limit of 10,000'. Does anyone know what's behind that? This think looks like a great item for a climbing trip, but even in the US it's easy to get above that.

[greener]

It has a hard drive, hard drives don't like high altitudes... ...it makes their ears pop.

[Jerome]

I'll be using it mainly outside (walking to work) in Montreal (where minus 25 Celcius isn't special during winter). If you ever see a post named "*&?*% of (*&*&? ?%#$ canadian winter and iPod don't mix", you'll know the 0 Celcius limit from the Apple specs were right...

[thaislump]

Originally posted by Ron Goodman:
<STRONG>The technical specs I saw gave an upper altitude limit of 10,000'. Does anyone know what's behind that? This think looks like a great item for a climbing trip, but even in the US it's easy to get above that.</STRONG>

It's worth noting that these sort of specs are by and large recommendations; on the order of "don't complain to us if it stops working under such conditions."

That said: hard drives are highly sensitive devices and the high RPMs can cause little vortexes of air that the heads are calibrated to compensate for. A drastic difference in air pressure compared to its optimal conditions might throw these calibrations out of whack. Perhaps more so since we're dealing with such a small, highly optimized drive. But I am not a scientist, so who knows?