Three and a half years ago I bought one of my most favorite gadgets ever – my first iPod. 4th generation, 20GB, that vanilla white.

We had a lot of fun together. The iTrip meant I could play it over any radio, and when I changed cars, the new stereo had a cable to plug it in directly. It got some larfs on the TUANZ blog. I loved it so I replaced the hard drive and then the battery, scoffing at the next gen photo and video-capable iPods. My greyscreen, text only iPod did all I needed and wanted it to – play music.

The beginning of the end was a simple numbers game – I have about 55GB of music, which doesn’t go into a 20GB iPod. Shuffling music became a pain – what if I NEEDED to hear Don’t Stop Believing and it wasn’t loaded? You can see my dilemma.

Then came a music format re-think. I had about 200 CDs, only 15-20 of which we actually listen to. All other music came courtesy of iPods through the line in. All those CDs are burned to MP3 and in iTunes, so what do I need those bulky cases taking up space for, right? So it was off to Real Groovy with a big box and a funny feeling, trading in all those years of collecting for cash (it took great willpower and cool reminder of the point of the exercise to not take the higher ‘trade’ offer).

So those CDs and a little extra turned into a 5th Generation, 120GB iPod Classic (Grey. They don’t do white in these). It’s my #3 music collection backup, after the Mac and external hard drive. It does a few more cool things old Whitey wasn’t built for, like storing and showing all my photos, and playing video, through the TV, even (if a little grainy). I don’t LOVE it as much as iPod #1, OK it’s smaller, but its edges seem unnecessarily sharp, and the click wheel is taking some getting used to. It also cavalierly created a new time sucking task irresistible to the obsessive/compulsive music fan – collecting album art. Ta.

Still, I like it. A lot, lack of firewire syncing aside. If and when I get me mitts on an iPhone, the new iPod will essentially become a backup hard drive with bells on. Old faithful is out to pasture, sitting faithfully, loaded with an OSX emergency startup disc, and a bit of music ready to call on when needed. It’s hard to say goodbye sometimes, eh.