iBall is pretty cool Ipod accessory
Frequent readers of this space will remember that I am a big fan of the Ipod, the great music player from Apple. (In fact, I liked my Ipod so much I bought my first Apple laptop because of it.)I have purchased a variety of products for my Ipod, mostly for use in my travel. The best of these travel-related products has to be my Bose QuietComfort 2 headphones. (At the time of my review I mentioned that an Ipod and the Bose headphones were a “religious experience”.)
I have had less luck with FM Modulators, devices that connect to the Ipod and wirelessly transmit what’s playing to the nearest FM radio. Such things make it easy to listen to the Ipod while driving.
However I have tried about three or four of these things and have not had good results with any of them. (I either get poor reception or poor sound, or both.)
I’ll keep looking.
Meanwhile, I took a look at a new product called the “iBall”, which was both impressive and fun.
This $249 device ($225 at Amazon) includes an Ipod dock, which includes both USB and Firewire connections, and a large, round speaker unit that can be located up to 100 feet away. This is perfect for homes like mine where you want music in the kitchen but locating the computer and Ipod there is not practical or possible.
The white plastic ball with a three-speaker array matches (close enough) the aesthetic design of the Ipod and has pretty nice sound. (It improved a lot when I upped the bass and treble from the default.)
The best part of this device, which I have not seen in some other remote solutions, is you can adjust the Ipod from the remote speaker. So you can skip songs, which is a plus. (Why I have rotten songs on my own Ipod is the subject of yet another column… I seem never to get around to deleting the rotten stuff.)
The remote ball can run on batteries or AC adaptor (which is included, a plus.) The unit is compatible with all versions of the Ipod (there are so many revisions of the Ipod that “Saturday Night Live” made fun of it) except the Ipod Shuffle. If you have a Shuffle there is an adaptor available.
You can get complete information at Oregon Scientific’s Web site at www.oregonscientific.com or, better yet, just Google “Iball.”
At least Itunes is working better now…after release 6 it was pretty hairy there for a while but the latest service release seems to have solved some problems.
One more comment on Itunes… if you have spent a fortune buying music or spent hours ripping your CDs, make sure you back up your hard drive to an external drive or to DVD. One hard drive crash and you’ll lose your entire investment in music.
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James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm, and computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His email address is jim@cyberdads.com
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