Well, first, some background, I guess. The last update on the topic of the iPod didn’t even mention the sad news: my iPod died last summer. A seemingly insignificant drop inside the car caused it to stop playing music no matter what I did. This made me sad since the iPod mini isn’t available, and besides, it’s not that old! At least, not to my pocketbook.

What I ended up doing was sending the little guy in to iPodResQ. For about $30 they provided round-trip shipping and diagnostic services. It turns out the logic board was bad (sigh), but still, the additional $100 still leaves the total cost far less than that of a new iPod, not to mention accessories. One caveat: the turnaround was a lot slower than their web site seemed to imply. I waited for 10 days all told, and only got a status report when I emailed them expressing my growing concern.

Even with that less than totally satisfactory experience, the repair job seems to have been first rate. When the mini arrived I was able to reload the software and music on it immediately and it’s been running fine ever since. And yes, I’m taking much greater care with it when I hook it up each day…