It takes some doing to make an iPod seem clunky, but Apple did it. The new iPod Mini establishes a new standard for easy portability in digital music players, and may well be the best player yet for those who want to hear some tunes while they exercise.

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The standard iPod is about the size of a desk of cards; the Mini is akin to a stack of 40 or 50 business cards. Put another way, a couple of Minis would fit into a regular iPod. And while iPods use specially sized hard drives with capacities of 15 GB, 20 GB, and 40 GB, the Mini uses a 4 GB micro drive, which is the size of a CompactFlash photo memory card.

The resulting unit weighs 3.6 ounces and can easily be carried in your hand (all the better for a tight grip while on the jogging trail), on your waist (included belt clip), or arm (using the optional armband). This is a big plus to those serious about their exercise (see sidebar). Also a plus for the active life is a 25 minute memory buffer -- your data goes from the hard drive to a cache on a chip so that if the hard drive gets bounced around the music will keep playing without interruption.

Besides the size reduction the Mini also benefits from a number of useful design improvements. The case now comes in five colors, which makes gives them a little more lively look. But more important the anodized finish is resistant to finger prints, smudges, and scratches. An entire accessory segment has developed for polishing products to keep the standard iPod's white and chrome exterior smooth and shiny.

The iPod Mini has USB 2.0 syncing cables standard. To save space, the Mini's control wheel has been combined with the control buttons into a single device Apple calls a "click wheel" that is probably the most intuitive control system yet for an iPod.

The Mini has most of the "extras" of its larger counterpart such as games, a calendar, contacts and notes. However, given the smaller LCD screen and the smaller hard drive, I don't recommend putting a lot of data on the Mini. You will be happiest with it as a music player.

As with the larger models, the iPod Mini integrates neatly with iTunes software, now in version 4.5 for both Windows and Mac. If you have iTunes set to automatically sync your computer's music library with the player, a clever little iTunes feature will detect whether you have more songs in your library than the Mini can hold. It then creates a playlist on the fly -- you can change it later -- that will fit. (This is not limited to the iPod Mini, by the way -- it will, for example, do the same when you sync a 15 GB iPod to a library built for the 40 GB version.)

Battery life is ample for your likely uses, although my testing suggests the claim of 8 hours is overly optimistic. As with all hard drive players, battery life is affected by how much use you make of the hard drive and the backlight. I recommend using of the iPod Mini's hold switch (which locks the controls) when you turn it off to guard against running down the player's power because of inadvertently triggering the click wheel.

Not all is happy in iPod Mini-land, however.

Apple has a reputation for hating leaks about its product announcements, and the run up to the Mini iPod's rollout undoubtedly reinforced Cupertino's desire for secrecy. Apple rumor sites predicted that the new device would be priced as low as $100, certainly no more than $200. So when the Mini iPod's actual list price was set at $250, numerous reviewers took the position that the player was $50 too expensive.

Indeed compared to other hard drive music players, a Mini iPod is a bad bargain on a dollar-per-gigabyte basis. You can buy a 15 GB Dell for less and Apple's own 15 GB iPod for only about $35 more. The point of the Mini, however, is that you get 4 GB worth of music in a unit about the size of a flash memory player (data on a chip rather than a hard drive), which have much less capacity for the money. The prevailing rate is about $100 for a 128 MB player. So if your comparison is other hard driver players, the Mini is at roughly a 4-1 disadvantage while compared with flash players the cost-to-capacity numbers run 12-1 in Apple's favor.

As this review was being prepared, a number of online news sites were reporting problems with static while playing back music on a Mini. One enterprising -- and apparently discretionary income-rich -- user reported taking his unit apart and tracing the problem to a poorly secured headphone jack. Apple, according to a spokesperson, is looking into the issue but has not reached any conclusions. I have not experienced the problem in my testing, but watch this space to see what happens in long term use. In any, buying an AppleCare extended warranty plan already a good idea because it covers replacing the battery, is probably an even a better idea.

Assuming no major technical flaws are found, the marketplace will pretty much sort out the pricing issue. Given the reports that stores are selling iPod Minis as fast as they come in, the marketplace's opinion appears to be that, ahem, size does matter for music players.

Location Is Everything

Don't say that we do not thoroughly investigate all crucial aspects of a product, including the key question on the iPod Mini: waist or arm?

This started out with my expressing curiosity to an Apple spokesperson as to the value of the $30 optional arm band, which had been given prominent play in ads for the iPod Mini. She said she uses it all the time for jogging. Which set in motion a little experiment.

I am a walker and happily carry my music players on the waist. But for you, dear reader, I forced myself to jog for a little while (the key word there is "little") to check it out. It turns out that there really is a difference between kinds of exercise, and users need to keep that in mind when deciding how to carry iPods, or any other hard drive-based music play.

The thing of it is that hard drives don't like to be jostled. They like to have their little platters (the disks on which the data is stored) steady and stable so the arm that reads the disks has no difficulties. While the player's buffer guards against skips in your music, you still do not want to cause unnecessary wear on the hard drive. Accordingly, you need to carry your player in a place where you bounce it the least.

Consider your posture while walking. You move your arms and legs in scissors-like fashion, pivoting from the shoulders and hips respectively. The pivot points, however, stay relatively stable so that a device carried there likewise is stable. Moreover in walking there is relatively little up and down movement to your body, which also argues for carrying a player on your waist.

Now look at yourself jogging. You are bouncing up and down as you stride, so now a player at your waist is being shaken. Meantime, typically your arms are bent at the elbow rather than hanging straight down as they do when walking, and thus, your arms aren't swinging as wide an arc. Thus, your upper arm becomes a relatively shock-free location to carry your player. Hence the arm band makes sense.

Design-wise, both carriers for the iPod Mini are similar -- a white plastic clip that you snap the player into. A white plastic clip secures the waist piece to a belt or waistband; an adjustable Neoprene strap is the attachment for the arm.

Of course, none of this is really why anybody goes with the armband vs. the waistband. You make your choice based on what you think looks coolest.

(c) 2004 Al Gordon.

In addition to his computer interests, Al Gordon is a principal in the Boston-area strategic consulting firm, Mary Fifield Associates, www.maryfifieldassociates.com

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You can reach Al Gordon at:

al@tnpcnewsletter.com