Turn any stereo with a cassette deck adapter, compatible to your iPod, with the help of iPod cassette adapter. By doing that, you can listen to all the songs stored in your iPod on your home or car stereo. But there's little doubt that the new nano's display is distinctly brighter. Place an old and new nano side-by-side and pull up the same photo on each and the original nano's display looks positively dingy in comparison to its newer buddy. It's also brighter than the display on my "old" 5G iPod-the full-sized iPod model prior to the one announced on September 12.

The lowdown the second-generation iPod nano is both a welcome step back to the more colorful (and scratch-resistant) days of the iPod mini and a moderate steps forward in functionality. This middle-child iPod feels and looks great with its rugged aluminum finish and bright display. Apple's done nice things with power management to allow the nano to play for 24-plus hours on a single charge. And the ability to record high-quality voice memos and more easily search your portable music collection are nice enhancements-though, like me, you may find the click-a-letter search feature more trouble than it's worth. All in all, this is a worthy successor to the original nano and one that's likely to be a smash hit this holiday season. Apple says that the 30GB iPod is rated for two hours of video playback on one full charge. I had seen the adverts on TV on how small the nano was but it wasn't until I held one in my hands that I fully understood how small and how impressive these MP3 players are.

Weighing only 42grams and a mere 90m by 40m and only 6.9m thick (or thin) these little units are not going to fill your suitcase when you go on holiday. Ideal for putting in your pocket, wallet or purse you can take them anywhere, except the pool of course as they are not waterproofs. The small size does create concerns for me with my children though. They can easily get lost if not looked after and outside of the home could be easy prey to pickpockets or thieves so beware. They come in two colours white and black and two memory sizes 2gb and 4gb, theses can hold 500 and 1000 songs respectively. For me this is more than enough songs but for those of you with large CD collections, who want to put their whole collection in one place, you may want to go for one the larger iPods. The colour screen looks excellent and shows easy navigation throughout, you can download your tunes into files, albums, types of music etc. My only concern with the screen was, I felt it may scratch easily and some of the cases that you can buy for the nano still leave the screen exposed. My concern is when you put your nano into your pocket or bag and catches something metal. I had heard on the news there had been issues with the early nanos, I still feel this could be an issue.

The main control in the centre of the unit was more touch sensitive than I expected, I use my thumb to scroll the menu, but it wasn't long before it was easy as pie, if fact working really well with the gel case I had bought to protect it. The sound is excellent, I can't tell the difference between CDs and MP3s and I often think those who say they can, can't either. You can download your music from iTunes, a legal way of owning music. They are impressively boxed also, where you open the box like a book and see your nano inside. However you do not get any form of charging your nano except for the computer leads that come with it. This means if you wish to take your nano away from your computer for a period of time you will need to buy a separate mains charger. Which of course is larger than the unit itself? My final conclusion is that this little unit is a fantastic move forward in the music player industry. I was impressed by the larger iPods that my friends had, but it wasn't until the appearance of the nano that I was suitably impressed to put my hand in pocket to make a purchase.

And I haven't been let down. However, I've found that my 30GB iPod plays most videos for nearly three hours straight after a full charge. Want to squeeze out a few more minutes and break the three hour barrier? Compress! If you compress your video for iPod-only playback and are willing to make a couple of compromises, I can promise you an extra 25 minutes of battery life from your 30GB iPod. I'm assuming that you'll get an extra 40 minutes on the 60GB model. It should come as no surprise that smaller videos (smaller picture sizes, lower bitrates and framerates) will play longer on one charge than a video that tops out at the highest settings allowable. But what exactly are you getting? I've done some extensive testing and this is what I've got so far.

A pretty graphic will follow shortly, but I wanted the Lifehackers to benefit from this info as soon as possible. The first file I tested was two hours of full-screen Looney Tunes, compressed using the MPEG4 format, scaled down to only 192 x 144 and at 15 frames per second. When the cartoons ended, I immediately restarted the same file. It played for three hours and four minutes straight! Wanting to be as thorough as possible, I tested several other videos at varying compression settings and framerates. I was very surprised at my results.