I’ll Never Part With You

Me and my old iPod Video have been through a lot. Heck, I remember the day I bought it and how, up to the minute I walked to the register to pay for it, I was still contemplating buying the Zen Vision:M (but they were out of stock).

But in the end I felt I had made the right choice, especially after seeing a coworker’s face beam with jealousy after showing it to her – she was still using one of those old music-only models with the LCD display in 2006.

I’ve had my share of accessories for it including a Timex watch that, with the dongle inserted into the charging/data dock, allowed me to control the music as well as volume from the watch (the music controls being limited to skipping and rewinding). This would have been great if I was into running at the time, but did come in handy on those road trips we took with it.

Flash-forward to when I bought my first iPod Touch. Once I was taken in by everything this nifty little gadget could do, my old iPod Video started collecting dust in the drawer, rarely to see the light of day. Why should it? All it did was play music. It had no WiFi, no apps (although I did have Tetris on it when Apple actually sold games for it via iTunes), a small screen, and was bulky. From that point on, it pretty much because useless.

But I refuse to get rid of it, even if Apple has made deleting songs from it such a monumental task. In fact I had to download different software to do it since Apple virtually bricked this thing with the latest iTunes “upgrade”.

This iPod is ugly, it’s clunky, but it’s in near-pristine condition due to the great care its owner gave it. From Day 1, it’s been wrapped in a thin plastic protective sheet and then encased in a hard plastic case for further protection. The silver backing is practically scratch-free save for the few marks I left on it when changing the battery, something that is darn near impossible with the new iPods.

And I still love the thing.

So much so that selling it is the furthest thing from my mind. It’s not worth the time or trouble to do it anyway. Here’s what Best Buy is offering for it as part of their trade-in program:

It doesn’t matter if this thing was touched by the hand of God and signed by him/her in gold ink, they wouldn’t give me a dime for it. I checked Amazon and the going rate is around $16 provided it meets their criteria. And eBay? Pfft. $30, tops. That’s exactly $1 per gigabyte of storage.

To me, it’s just not worth my time to go out of my way to sell the thing when the sentimental value I have in it far outweighs anything anyone is willing to give me for it. Not only that, it’s still cool to bring out and use now and then for nostalgic purposes even if the nostalgia is only 7 years old.

Yes, my current iPod does more than this one and my phone does even more than both. But even so, I’m holding on to this classic piece of technology for as long as I can and continue to use it as I see fit.

Well, that’s until Apple decides it doesn’t want to support it anymore…