Just took a quick trip into Center City to replenish some essentials (rolled oats, oat bran, cashew butts; extra large farm fresh brown eggs from Esh's at the Reading Terminal, etc.) and have lunch at my favorite vegetarian Indian restaurant (Samosa on Walnut near 12th; all you can eat lunch buffet for 5.84; no, I'm not a vegetarian but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy their food from time to time).
I timed my return trip pretty well, arriving at Septa's regional rail station below the Gallery about three minutes before the train, and decided to fire up my iPod for the journey home. Except that my two-year-old iPod, which has never given me even a moment of trouble and which had been working flawlessly during the bus ride into Center City just two hours earlier, stubbornly refused to start. And in front of all those people in the station! I hid my humiliation by smiling and carelessly bobbing my head while tapping my toes to the strains of some unheard sweet melodies.
When I got home, I first tried to confirm if the iPod was really dead by plugging it into the firewire cable. No go. It just lay there, with nary a peep.
So I went to Amazon to search for a replacement, all the while grumbling under my breath about how I had been counting on its lasting at least one more year... Well, I decided I might as well spring for the $399 40GB model, especially since I have a $150 rebate certificate on its way from Amazon (in appreciation for all those external hard disks I bought last month).
Having settled the succession question, I decided to explore other options. Like maybe just getting a replacement battery. After exploring Apple's web site, I discovered some interesting things. If the iPod is more than one year old (and thus out of warranty) and the only thing wrong with it is a dead battery, Apple will replace the entire unit for a fee of $99 plus 6.95 shipping. (I know that one can buy batteries from third party sites for considerably less, but then one has to install them oneself. No thanks.) That looked like an interesting alternative.
Apple even provides a check list to make sure that the problem is a dead battery. One of the items on the checklist is "Resetting iPod if it appears frozen or doesn't respond."
Resetting the iPod? Hmmm. Who knew?
While the instructions are slightly different depending on the model, in my case all I had to do was
Press and hold the Play/Pause and Menu buttons until the Apple/iPod logo appears, about 6 to 10 seconds. You may need to repeat this step.
Actually, no, I didn't have to repeat that step. Within six seconds my beloved iPod had sprung to life like a Phoenix rising from the ashes (sorry for the cliché, but I felt a simile was called for and I'm fresh out of original ones).
I wonder how many other iPod owners needlessly replace their batteries when a simple reset is all that's needed to restore an apparently dead iPod to glowing life?
Posted by jt at February 12, 2005 04:21 PM