Guest Author - Michelle Anne Cope

For one my birthday this year, I got a . . .

Shuffle – the green one! My birthday is officially July 20th; however, my best friend forever, Kelly, gave me the Shuffle a bit early to help me celebrate becoming editor of this site. How could I not accept an early gift? I mean, if I’m to pen on screen about iTunes, I most certainly need a device that plays iTunes.

The Shuffle comes in a variety of shades – blue, pink, green, orange, and a silver color. My metal green Shuffle matches the various shades of green I have in the décor of my studio. Because it added such ambience to the room, I left it in the cute plastic display case for two days. On day three, I removed the Shuffle and displayed it proudly on my shirt, a green shirt. I wore it for a few hours around the neighborhood. See, I wasn’t scared, just a tad bit nervous of delving into a new world. I’m a PC kind of girl and this is my first ever “Apple” product. I had questions. Did I have to have a Mac? Did my BFF misunderstand and think I already had a Mac?

PC or Mac - it doesn't matter. You can use the Shuffle on a PC or a Mac. The hardest thing about the Shuffle was getting it out of the package. It was encased in this thick plastic that was no match for a butter knife, in the end, it was a pair of wire cutters from my husband’s tool collection that set my new musical device free.

The Shuffle came with a bright white docking station and ear buds. Now, I’ve yet to master the art of keeping ear buds in my ears, so I opted to use my SONY MDR-A35 headphones. A perfect fit. While I was charging the Shuffle, I downloaded the latest version of the iTunes library for free! Thank you Mr. Apple! This application transferred my music from my Windows Media Player library. I was glad, because I also haven’t mastered Windows Media Player 11. That’s another story.

After that, I started downloading my CDs onto my laptop. Now, in the past I’ve downloaded a CD or two to burn or to transfer to my MP3 player (Napster), but I never downloaded my entire collection. I didn’t see the point; I mean I already have them in nice square plastic cases alphabetically organized by genre. Wow, I didn’t know what I had been missing.

The iTunes library did everything for me and when the Shuffle was charged, it was just a matter of copying some of my favorite tunes to “Aberrations”. That’s what I named my Shuffle. Long story short – an old program director at a radio station I worked at said I was truly an aberration. I think it was an insult, but I liked the sound of the word and have used it ever since for blog titles and such.

I will tell you that I found I had more CDs than space on my new Shuffle, but that’s fine with me. I can’t even begin to listen to 240 songs at one time. That is about what my Shuffle seems to hold. I love it! It is so small and the clip fits anywhere.

Shuffle is the perfect name. It will take your songs and play them randomly, or you can have the Shuffle play your songs in order. The only down side I have found is that you have no way to read titles and you only have one play list. I love that the middle button is very easy to use to navigate through your songs and control the volume. The clip is sturdy and the outside casing seems very resilient.

Also, as an extra bonus, I can listen to my Shuffle with my Harman Kardon Soundsticks II 3-Piece Plug and Play Multimedia Speaker System by JBL. The jack that fits into my laptop also fits into my Shuffle. Awesome!

So, I’ve transferred my entire CD collection to my laptop and I will rotate the songs on my Shuffle every few weeks. My husband gave me an iTunes Music Store card so I can by any new CDs I might want. I have no excuse to keep those cute plastic squares filled with silver discs, but more than likely I will. I’m sentimental that way.

By the way, can you even begin to guess who the first artist to be downloaded onto my Shuffle was?

Have a great week!
Chel