I’ve had my iPod for almost 18 months now and its probably the gadget I use the most, even more than my mobile phone. There’s no doubting its numerous features are great and its pretty easy to use out of the box, but there’s a few things a new iPod user might not know.

1. Change The Earphones - before you do anything, ditch the standard white earphones that are included with the iPod. They are iconic and serve a purpose but the sound quality is average at best. Change your earphones to a half-decent set and immediately you will be amazed how much the quality of your music increases. Using the default earphones I had to have the volume almost up to the top to get a decent level in my ears; with my new ones I have it at a little under a quarter!
2. Check Out Podcasts - a lot of people, especially non-techie types, will only use their iPods for music. However, there is a world of free, yes that’s right free, entertainment out there in the form of podcasts. These are starting to become more mainstream as content is produced by some of the bigger guns like the BBC, Channel 4 and The Guardian, but I fear few actually check them out. For a few good examples, check out my Podcast Wednesday posts.
3. Get a Case - I find my 1st generation (1G) Nano scratches easily and also has a small chip round the edge where it fell out of my pocket once. I understand that 2G Nanos and other recent models are more hardy, but cases are inexpensive (my black rubber case cost 99p!!) and certainly increase the lifespan of your iPod. Even better if it protects the screen.
4. Get a Docking Station - I have a set of speakers which double as a docking station for my iPod. They run on 4 AA batteries or from an AC adaptor and provide a decent sound quality (and volume) that let me use my iPod anywhere and turn the iPod from a personal music player into a compact portable sound system. This gadget even has a USB input that will sync and charge your machine while its docked in the speakers.
5. It Can Hold Files - in some respects the iPod is like any other USB memory stick, which means, as long as you have hard drive use enabled, you can drag and drop files to and from it. This means that you can chuck all those old, old 128MB and 256MB memory sticks and use your iPod instead (spare capacity dependent of course!)

There you go, my top 5 tips for iPod owners that I think go missed or are overlooked. I’m sure there are other so let me know in the comments and if we get to 10 I’ll update the list in a later post.

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