My 6th gen, 160GB iPod got here on Monday!

Now comes the question: How long does it take to load 119.41GB of music on an iPod? (thanks to my friend, “M”, for the image suggestion of the Tootsie Roll owl vs my new iPod) Before we get down to the load time, let’s do a review of the 6th gen vs my 5th gen, 60GB. (I skipped the 5.5 gen)

So let’s get this ball rolling… it’s shiny. I like shiny things. Shiny things make me happy.

It actually feels lighter than my 60GB 5th gen iPod. Not by much, but a bit. Also, it’s not quite as thick, much to my surprise. The clickwheel is even more recessed into the housing, and is a little disconcerting in just how smoothly it registers your movements.  The screen is noticabely brighter, but I know that actually happened with the 5.5 gen.

Overall physical appearance, I love. It just APPEARS sturdier than any previous model, and I’m not sure why, but I’m not going to argue with it.

Here’s a couple of images, my 5th gen is on the left in both, 6th gen on the right.

So, the physical aspect out of the way, how is the software and load times? Well, here’s an image of the time when I started loading. As the subject line says, I have 119.41GB of music to get loaded on this puppy, and as of 4:15 PM (when I started writing this), it’s at 13.35GB. This is going to take forever. I will probably be leaving it here all night to sync, and come back before I head to bed to grab it.

I know everyone thinks I’m nuts for wanting my entire music collection with me all the time, but I had a perfect example the other night. I really dig the new White Stripes album, Icky Thump. While I was writing, I flipped on my iPod and… apparently I had removed the White Stripes playlist for something else. D’OH! So, yes, I know it seems silly to carry around so much music at one time, but sometimes, you just get a hankering for that one stray song, and it would be nice to have it with you.

UPATE:But, low-and-behold, it didn’t take as long as I thought it would! It was all done loading by 9:03 PM, so just about 5 and a 1/2 hours on the nose. I had to do a reset to get it to work, and I wasn’t aware I had that much video, but oh well.

As for the actual software, now based on Mac OS X, well… it’s pretty. The overall look is nice, very smooth and rounded, but you have to wonder how much battery life all the prettiness is costing you.

I will say the big let down is “Cover Flow”, it just does NOT make sense with a click wheel.

So, what do I do with my 5th gen now? It’s going to make a nice, permanent, alarm clock via my new iHome IH8SR. Nothing like waking to random punk music!

All-in-all, I’m glad I upgraded, and I’m sure in a year’s time, Jobs will make me drool again.