Filed under: iPod Family, How-tos
New life for your old iPod
Got an iPod gathering dust? Even if your preferred iPod is one of the shiny new ones you've recently acquired, there is still plenty of life left in those relics of iPod history.Lifehacker just published a list of their top 10 suggestions to use an old iPod in new ways. There are some of the more common methods (such as a making a basic stereo system by adding speakers or turning it into a backup drive) and some pretty inventive ones like as turning it into a standalone portable Windows XP boot drive.
As one of the readers at LH commented, the biggest missing suggestion is to give the old iPod to a friend or family member. That's exactly what I did with my first iPod. I took my eldest niece with me when I upgraded two years ago, then presented her with my 3G iPod when she expressed an interest it. Since then, she's received a new one of her own. The iPod I purchased then is now alternating between providing music in a home speaker system and in the car.
Have you found an inventive way to recycle your old iPods? Let us know in the comments!
(Via Lifehacker)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mastermind said 2:14PM on 12-27-2008
Business Week had some story about a terabyte ipod (2012)
lol
would this even be necessary - no one can listen`to that much music
regardless...steve jobs "mastermind theory" is worth watching: http://malcolmred.co.uk/
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waiownsyou said 5:19PM on 12-27-2008
No one problem can listen to that much music but you can easily fill that up with movies. Too many people think iPod means music only. I only have 100 songs on my iPhone 16GB and it only has 200 MB left. Yeah.
Jay Kothari said 2:35PM on 12-27-2008
If your car stereo (factory or otherwise) supports a CD changer, and you don't have one (or even if you do, but find yourself troubled to make CDs and replace them), you could purchase an ipod-adapter for your CD changer port on your headunit. I purchased one from http://www.icarkits.com/ and it is very good.
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Level 5 said 2:37PM on 12-27-2008
I remember hearing about a 3.5" drive going into an old iPod, which I'd LOVE to try in my car's audio deck. The problems are power, heat and headcrashing. It's only a pipe dream, but if we could get SATA working and not IDE, I'd totally be down with a 1.5TB iPod in the car.
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michas_pi said 3:04PM on 12-27-2008
I think your car would fall apart before you listen to all of that music :)
Eric said 3:26PM on 12-27-2008
I have a 4G with a dead screen... it is now a hard drive, especially useful when I migrated from my PC to my Mac. The USB performance was painful, but Firewire was much better. I now use it to move things between my MacBook Pro and my Internet-less iMac G3 - both have Firewire.
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SSteve said 4:19PM on 12-27-2008
My wife's a vet and we own a clinic. My old 1G iPod has been running non-stop for almost three years serving up our hold music. The hard drive finally gave out a few weeks ago.
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Jeff Jungblut said 4:41PM on 12-27-2008
3G iPod = FireWire boot disk containing the Tiger install DVD, for wiping and reinstalling older G4s at the office that don't have a DVD drive.
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vandil said 5:29PM on 12-27-2008
3G iPod -> Gave to father-in-law as first iPod when I picked up a 5G iPod.
5G iPod -> Once I got my 16GB iPhone 3G, my 5G iPod now serves as BOSE Sound dock iPod for use as a stereo system and as a backyard barbeque/fire pit music box.
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2g jailbreak :'( said 12:03AM on 12-28-2008
Back to the terabyte conversation, if apple ever released an iPod capable of video files larger than 2g than blue ray may be an option (or hd-DVD for the few followers) for either viewing, storing or transporting your video files, with 7g movies that would fill up decently fast
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SysRq said 7:37PM on 12-28-2008
I just brought my brother's old iPod (which was fried) in to the Apple store and recycled it, getting a discount on my new one. I have another old iPod that is now a portable 30Gb hard drive. =]
Cheers,
~SysRq
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Infancier said 8:10PM on 12-28-2008
I subscribed lifehacker.com and tuaw.com both.
And read this article on lifehacker.com first. =_#!!!
Share another ipod article: Top 5 Things for Your iPod.
http://www.applemacvideo.com/blog/2008/12/christmas-gift-ipod.html
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andrew McFarland said 8:29PM on 12-28-2008
Besides ebaying my 4th gen 20GB (which I still regret) to afford a Powerbook? Giving my shuffle to my wife to get her hooked :)
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Alan Cook said 1:13AM on 12-29-2008
Purchased a set of speakers for our 1st Gen iPod Mini and we're using this in the baby's room for lullabies/soothing music.
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