I have an older 20GB iPod. It doesn’t have a fancy schmancy video screen. Its got the click wheel and 20GB of disc space and that’s all I need!

But now its giving me a sad iPod face. Apple always gives these sort of cryptic errors like “Sad Mac” and a classic one was an image of a floppy disc with a blinking question mark on it.

In addition to the sad iPod I also get a funny folder icon with an exclamation point on it. Underneath it says http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/

Hmmm… I used to be able to get it to start up anyway and it could play many songs, but not all. About every third song it would hang on and skip. I can hear and feel the teeny tiny little drive arm scanning back and forth over the surface of the disc as it searches for some readable data.

This isn’t good.

I wanted to connect it to my laptop at work and reformat it. Afterall its just a hard drive - and I think its even formatted as an NTFS drive. I figured I could reset it and reinstall all my music.

But it doesn’t show up in iTunes and doesn’t show up in My Computer. Apparently my computer won’t recognize it.

The situation has continued to deteriorate.

I have reset it according to the instructions and tried to attach it to other computers. All to no avail.

Since its several years old I am certain that it isn’t covered by the standard warranty. Hoping I might take advantage of some glitch I entered the serial number in Apple’s database to see if, by some remote chance it was still covered.

IT IS STILL COVERED!! I still have nearly sixty days left on the extended AppleCare warranty I got!! Hot shit!!

I am going to take this down to the local Apple store and have them replace it. Naturally, if they can get it to work that would be fine, but this machine is pretty hosed up and I don’t think they can get it to work.

Sadly, they don’t make any 20GB iPods anymore.

Isn’t that sad?

They would have to replace it with a modern video iPod.

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