iPod: not suitable for use underwater

Two days ago, I killed my iPod. I am in mourning, since it was only just over six months old. Here's the low-down. I had been listening to an Audible audiobook at the gym (Noam Chomsky's ‘Hegemony or survival: America's quest for global dominance’, if you're interested). I returned from the gym with my iPod stuffed casually in the bottom of my gym bag. (Gone are the days when the novelty factor was sufficient for me to, say, wrap it in something or put it in a separate pocket in the bag—the plastic screen is pretty much all scratched up now, so who cares?) I removed the iPod hours later from the puddle of water it had been sitting in most of the afternoon. My water bottle leaked. My iPod is dead.

I tried some resuscitation manouevres in vain. I let it drain. (Yes, drain—water ran out from the bottom socket. It was pretty wet.) No response. I tried a hard reset. I tried sticking it on the charger. Nothing worked. I could hear a waterlogged disk trying hard to spin up, but the display showed nothing.

There is some upside to this. Firstly, my home contents insurance policy should cover it. Secondly, the Apple Centre on Gouger Street has checked it out, and it's completely beyond repair. As a "service part", a new 40G iPod costs over $A 800. Now, if you've been tracking iPod prices, you'll know that this is about $A 200 more than the RRP of a new, colour, 60G iPod. So, I'm figuring that for the $A 100 excess on the insurance policy, I'm getting 20G of storage, and a colour display. Not bad. (Of course, the insurance company may decide to pay $A 800 for a replacement just to spite me, in which case I'll have paid $A 100 to be without an iPod for a couple of weeks. I hope that doesn't happen.)

I'll post news as it breaks.