Thought Sausage

Welp, I've taken my nano and my newly chipped shoes out for a spin. Since there are about 500 million reviews of the various aspects of this thing on the web, I'll limit mine to my own opinions based on my first run through.

First off, if you're an old school itunes user, you gotta upgrade to @ least 7.0. This bears mentioning because I usually treat software with a "if it ain't broke don't fix it' approach (at least all my music gear), so I was still in 6. I gotta say though, the upgrade was definitely worth it. I'm kicking myself for not doing it earlier.

So after configuring the nano (for the record, I named it Butkus...yes that's the name of the dog Rocky runs with in Rocky I, but it is my ipod and I can name it what i want so shut the fuck up), I decided rather than crack my other ipod to yank off the songs I want, it'd be safer to just purchase the specific songs I wanted on this thing for now and worry about what I'm missing later. Boy howdy that was stupid. About 70 bucks poorer thanks to the itunes store, Butkus is now a mean growling machine that croons some frightening shit. All killa no filla.

From what I gather, you don't actually _need_ itunes for anything with the Nike+ unless you want it to interface with the website. All the transmissions and data seems to be logged on the little thing that connects to the bottom of the nano. I haven't really played with the website yet, but aside from the fact that Nike can choke on my left nut for inundating me with their bullshit flash interface, it looks like it could be quite useful. The interface between itunes and the website is quite seemless, and despite the fact that its really not saving you a whole lot of time because it seems to only upload 4-5 variables, the fact that you can automatically sync it is pretty cool.

I set about calibrating the thing to my own pace because from what Ian said, the mileage and speeds aren't all that accurate unless you do so. One thing that sorta irked me here was that I set it to calibrate at 400 meters and ran for a half hour (tinkering with the playlist). You can set which distance you want to run when you calibrate, and I would assume that 400 meters means after 400 meters the thing is calibrated. Rather, the fucking thing waits until after my 30 minute jaunt, I'm informed that calibration failed because I ran longer than I told the nano I was gonna run. So I had to backtrack and run _exactly_ a quarter mile (although how accurate can that really be?) in order for it to tell me it was satisfied. Plus it didn't save any of my data from the half hour I ran. I mean WTF?

I calibrated it for my walking pace and we were off to the races. I put in a solid 20 minutes on the thing at a medium pace and allz I gotta say is that this thing is the absolute business for distance runs. You can set your workout to be based on a time or distance. While that's cool for time and all, the system is really a glorified stopwatch at that point (although it will tell you how far you've gone and what your speed is).

So for the system itself, this thing is the absolute shiznit. One thing I didn't realize it does is that it stores your personal bests and previous run data right on the ipod, so you can pull this up during the run. Not that I envision myself doing that a lot, but it's nifty to know it's there.

The major thumbs down I gotta throw out is the fucking armband for this. Like a little bitch I had to get the "Nike + Armband". I couldn't possibly have envisioned a more user unfriendly design. The problem is that all the other nano armbands aren't made to fit the running chip that plugs into the bottom. The problem? They completely covered the screen! I shit you not, if you buy the "official Nike + armband" forget about shuffling through songs or turning the volume up while you run. Or on the off chance you want to see a readout for time (which the thing does display), you're basically out of luck. Seriously, what fucknut armband engineer designed this thing? For 30 bucks, you'd think Nike or whoever manufactured this could have splurged for a clear plastic window. I suppose the counter argument is that completely covering the ipod protects it from the elements. Well I got news for those people, I've had an armband for my other Ipod for almost a year now and I've taken that thing through hell and back, and it provides just as much protection, but I can read the display and shuffle through shit at anytime. I mean, hey, it doesn't have that swoosh logo with the plus on it in place of the screen, but after 14 or so miles, that logo can go fuck itself.