By Eric Nguyen

I`m on vacation right now, and my iPod is with me. Seeing how Apple advertises its latest iteration of the iPod mini as having a battery life determined by the longest plane flight (New York to Singapore, 18 hours), they`re very likely to be catering to the customer who`s taking planes everywhere, spending an enormous amount of time either at 5,000 feet, or sitting around at whatever airport is most convenient. Hopefully you aren’t outside the plane at that altitude, but apparently the iPod can take up to 10,000 feet. Cool.

Now, my Third Generation iPod only has an 8-hour battery life, but that was sufficient to get me across the Pacific in one piece. Airlines these days have plenty of movies to watch, and food to eat (I don`t think I`ve ever eaten instant noodles on a plane before), so I ended up not listening to my iPod all that much. So when are you going to be using your iPod for 18 hours at a time? I suppose if you`re on an African safari, in the middle of the jungle, you aren`t going to have much of a chance to recharge your iPod. Likewise, if you`re trapped on a desert island, it`ll also be a bit hard to find power. However, in that case, you probably have bigger problems than a lack of musical entertainment.

On vacation, you`re also pretty likely to have people trying to steal your iPod – those white earbuds may look like a good idea when you have black silhouettes dancing with them against brightly colored backgrounds, but in practice they`re like magnets in a sea of thieves. It would probably be pretty easy for Apple to include one of those laptop lock ports on each iPod, although that would take up a bit of valuable space. They could also come up with a really cool magnetic locking mechanism, where you can just stick your iPod to any metal surface, and order it to stick there. However, that might lead to a bit of a problem with people who have had surgery, and still have metal parts inside of them. Or people with braces, for that matter. Ouch. If you`re not careful, you could end up like Jaws at the end of The Spy who Loved Me.

Finally, there’s the question of how to listen to your iPod when on the run. Of course, you could always get an iPod-specific speaker set, but those can be expensive for travelers on a budget. You could also get a cassette adapter, but those are only usable in cars, and cars with cassette players, too – an increasingly rare commodity these days. So, the best option is then an FM transmitter such as an iTrip, which, although able to be interfered with by other radio stations, can be used anywhere that has a radio. Now, this has a lot of potential for, shall we say…villainous activities. In addition to the obvious usage of the iTrip to annoy other motorists in your vicinity, you can also use it to trick and fool people, often to humorous effect – not that I have any personal experience with any of this, of course. For example, at a health club where the weight room has TV’s broadcasting their sound output over the radio (so that you don’t have to listen if you don’t want to), it would be quite easy to find out what show will be on, then replace the dialog with choice selections of your own choosing. Also, it would be rather amusing to overdrive an iTrip (probably by connecting it to a large external antenna), and turn the local news station into something reporting what you want it to. That would probably be against the law, though, and I would recommend against it, at least in a professional sense. It would be really cool, though.

The one thing that everyone should remember while on vacation is that your iPod can help you make new friends. This is where the calendar/contacts features of the iPod come in handy – being able to save the day by recalling the name and phone number of your best friend’s insurance agent’s uncle’s bicycle store can come in handy sometimes. Likewise, if your calendars list includes useless trivia like Talk Like a Pirate Day, you could become someone’s lifeline on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. And don’t forget – that Brick game can be pretty addictive.

August 23, 10:04 PM EDT