Say you want to listen to your iPod at work, but discover that your iPod’s battery is dead. If you’re like me, you probably have a perfectly good computer at your desk with perfectly good USB ports which can be used to charge your iPod. (If you’re also like me, you won’t have the AC adapter handy, because, like, what fun would that be?)

The problem: when you plug an iPod into a computer’s USB port, Windows will grab hold of it, and mount it as a USB drive. When this happens, the iPod will not play music — it will ony display the “Do not disconnect” message and bozo sign. The basic issue is that an iPod will function as either a music player or a USB drive, but not both simultaneously.

The solution: plug the iPod into your computer’s USB port. Once Windows mounts it as a drive, go to My Computer, right-click on the iPod’s drive letter (or icon), and choose Eject. Windows will then unmount the iPod, allowing it to function as a music player, but it will still be on the computer’s USB bus, allowing it to charge.

Don’t forget to use Safely Remove Hardware before pulling the plug when you leave for the day!

My one concern so far is the velcro—sometimes velcro doesn’t last very long.

• Full-size, over-the-ear headphones
• Good sound
• Comfortable (one would think this would be automatic with full-size headphones, but alas…)
• Under $100

First, I tried a pair of Sony MDR-V150 headphones. Their sound was decent, but they pinched my ears against my glasses so badly that I could only wear them for 30 minutes or so.

I then compared two different Sennheiser HD headphones and two different Grado Labs SR headphones. The Sennheiser headphones were comfortable, but either produced blaring, muddy mids from the iPod, or couldn’t be driven by the iPod at a reasonable volume. Sennheisers are obviously intended for use with an amplified hi-fi system. The Grados, on the other hand, produced very nice sound with good volume, even from my little iPod mini.

I settled on a set of Grado SR60s, and I am digging these headphones. The best words to describe their sound is clean, accurate, and balanced. The bass is punchy, fast, and clean; it has quite a presence, but it doesn’t get in the way. The high stuff (especially cymbals, which, being a drummer, I’m picky about) sounds great and is supurbly accurate. And finally, the mids are sweet! For years, I’ve done the “V” thing when it comes to EQ: crank the bass and treble, and turn down the mids. Not with these Grados. To my ears, they sound best with a flat EQ or just a mild boost to the bass. That’s balance.

The sound is also incredibly rich. I can hear individual picks, the overtones in the bottom head of a tom-tom, and the deep but delicate tone of a bass guitar. In music I’ve listened to for years, I’m hearing things I’ve never heard before.

Wow.

I looked hard at the iPod Shuffle as a replacement for my USB keychain drive. But with the 1GB model priced at $149, the 4GB mini is just $30 more for a much more capable device… so I went with the mini.

Note: the primary improvement on the 2nd-gen mini is battery life: an improvement from ~8 hrs. to ~18 hrs. This is a major improvement, but I don’t believe that the shorter battery life of the 1st-gen will be a major issue for my situation.

The challenge now of course is to not piss away a bunch of money on accessories for it!