I’ve been thinking of buying an iPod Shuffle for a long time now, ever since the new clip-style design came out in fact. Although I already have an 80GB 5th Gen iPod, it’s just too big for taking running, using in the gym, etc.

With the weather taking a turn for the worse here in Vancouver, outdoor running is going to take a back seat, so I’ll be on the treadmill or the rowing machine in our gym. There are a number of podcasts which will be perfect for the gym, such as CBC’s Quirks and Quarks and NPR’s Science Friday so I figured now would be a perfect time to stop procrastinating.

Last night I took the plunge, went down to London Drugs and picked up a green one, mainly because Nathan already has a silver one, which would have been the logical choice. Once home, I left it charging overnight, then loaded two podcasts for the walk in to work this morning. I was a bit worried when it refused to play the podcasts, claiming there were no ‘songs’ available, so I left it at home.

A quick check of Apple’s support site revealed that it doesn’t play podcasts in ‘shuffle’ mode, so once I’d set the slider accordingly all was well. The only downside is that the headphone cord is quite a bit shorter than the one on my regular iPod, so I can’t plug it into my desktop at work and kick back in my chair. However, that will be an advantage in the gym, which is what I bought it for anyway, so I can’t complain.