I bought a friend an iPod Nano for her birthday. I own a 4th generation iPod (the last of the monochrome large-disk iPods).

Whilst it obviously has some extreme differences, it's the changes to how it connects to a PC that I appreciate the most. With the iPod 4G when you connect it to a PC you can't safely disconnect unless you manually eject the device by using iTunes or Windows Device manager. But sometimes Windows will not let you eject the device despite you best efforts, and to be on the safe side you have to shutdown your PC then disconnect it (I have irreversibly corrupted an MP3 player by unplugging it without ejecting it first). The iPod Nano can be unplugged at anytime that data is not being transfered to it, including whilst iTunes is open. No need to manually eject it. This is a far friendly change.

One gripe I have is how iTunes handles Album Art. It automatically retrieves all details for a CD but not the album cover. Why not? They are already hosting the album cover for iTMS so why not set up iTunes to retrieve it along with the other details? Instead I'll have to get the covers from sites like Amazon that are normally very low resolution and overly compressed. Which won't be obvious on the Nano's screen but if you use your music elsewhere, such as on a Home Theatre PC, the quality (or lack there of) will be very obvious.

I plugged in my new headphones to see how the iPod Nano sounded. After just a quick listen I can report that is sounds as good as my iPod 4G. It's kinda strange to hear such volume coming from such a small device. And let's be clear, you can't really appreciate how small it is until you hold it in your hand. The hole for the headphone jack almost consumes the entire thickness of the Nano.

The iPod Nano deserves to be very popular. Especially for for joggers since it uses flash memory that won't damage like the disc's in other iPods and iPod Minis can.