Tiny tunes: iPod Nanos selling well in area stores

Apple's new iPod Nanos are flying off the shelves at the Cape Girardeau Best Buy.

"People are buying them like crazy," said Jackie Kelso, who works in wireless sales for the electronics store giant. "We can't keep them in stock. They're going out faster than we can get them in."

Not surprising to those who follow the electronics industry. Ever since Apple Computer Inc. jumped into the music player business with the original iPod in 2001, the rest of the consumer electronics industry has been playing catch-up. So far, experts say nobody has come close in terms of coolness or sales.

Apple, refusing to stand still, has released its trimmest full-featured iPod yet. The iPod Nano plays music, displays photos, is cleverly designed and is VERY small.

Unlike regular iPods that store songs on hard drives, the Nano uses solid-state memory. That makes the Nano less prone to skipping when dropped or jostled, though that has never really been a problem with its bulkier brethren.

The flash memory, plus an internal redesign, gives the Nano a more responsive feel. It also makes it possible to squeeze a lot of bang into a package just over a quarter-inch thick.

In fact, the Nano is 80 percent smaller than the original 2001 iPod and 62 percent smaller than the iPod Mini that it replaced. The Nano is only as tall as a business card and it's three fingers wide.

The Nano is nevertheless bigger than the less capacious and cheaper iPod Shuffle, which lacks a display. And it has more features than previous versions of the regular iPod line, including a world clock, a built-in stopwatch and a software-based screen lock.

Available in black or white, the Nano comes in two configurations: A 2-gigabyte model (enough for about 500 pop songs) for $199 and a 4 GB model (1,000 songs) for $249. By comparison, a 20 GB hard-drive iPod is $299.

Like all iPods, the Nano only works with Apple's free iTunes software for either Windows and Mac OS X computers. That locks you into the iTunes Music Store.

The Nano supports a variety of music formats, but not Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media. (Look elsewhere if, for some reason, you would rather pay monthly subscription fees for music that's rendered unplayable if you miss a payment).

At the Best Buy in Cape Girardeau, most customers want the 4 gig-iPod Nanos instead of the 2-gig, Kelso said. The most popular color is the black iPods, she said.

"We can't keep the 4s in stock," she said. "I'm having to order them as soon as we get them in. We still have some of the 2-gigs left, and mainly the ones in white."

They're selling to a lot of young people, she said, but many adults like them, too.

"Not just college kids," she said. "There are a lot of doctors who use them in the operating room."

She said that the Nanos come with a cable that allows users to download the music from their Apple computers and PCs. They must be formatted through iTunes, then plug the cable into the computer's USB port.

Business editor Scott Moyers contributed to this report.