Ipod Photo??

I'm thinking of buying a 60gb ipod Photo. Does anyone have one? I'm basically looking for an MP3 player and something that will work as a portable hard-drive to store my photos on. Does purchasing the Ipod photo make sense? Is there any alternative system people would recommend? Thanks in advance for any guidance! :-)

I've spent quite a while contemplating the same question, and come to the conclusion that the ipod + photo adapter is the best solution. The main issue i have is that the new (5th generation) ipod is usb2 only (no firewire like the prior models ) - so you'll need a PC/Mac with a USB2 port to download the ipods contents. My mac has USB1/firewire only, so either i need a new mac, or the previous (4th generation) ipod..
Also, it might be worth consulting the discussions/help on the apple site, or any of the numerous other ipod related sites and ask about compatibility with whichever camera you plan on using. I asked the guy in my local Apple store only last week if there were any compatibility issues with any cameras and he claimed there weren't.. I've heard otherwise though, albeit before the new ipod was available.
Hope that helps..

What's the photo adaptor all about and how does it work? Do you mean buying a regular ipod plus an extra piece of kit to go with it? Sorry, I'm totally clueless about all this stuff and am seriously running out of time to get something bought before I go (to say nothing of uploading music onto the damn thing!) :-)

That should not be a problem, USB2 is backward compatible with USB1. You should have no problem to hook up a USB2 ipod to a USB1 computer.

Yeah, it's an extra device, you need it to connect the camera - See here. Notice on that page there's a link to a list of compatible cameras too. Not exhaustive, just the ones apple have tested, but as i see your planning to get a camera i guess that's a reliable guide.

Uploading music is super easy using provided you have a computer with itunes installed on it. Itunes is a free download from Apple, and also comes with the ipod on a CD.

I believe there are compatibility issues with USB1.1 and iPods. I have a 3G and it doesn't work with my old USB1.1 computer (which I don't use anymore). I got around it by using a firewire connection, though I needed a tiny adapter to go from 4-pin to 6-pin firewire.

I've been mulling over upgrading my iPod for photo storage. The adapter for the iPod photo is cheaper than one that would work with my 3G non-photo 20G iPod. There are two options for that (a media reader for iPod and a digital camera link, both made by Belkin), but both have problems. In fact, the media reader I ordered on eBay didn't work -- I had to return it.

I think part of the problem is how slowly the photo transfer takes place. The port that would provide AC power to recharge the iPod battery is taken up by whatever device transfers the photos. So, the photo transfer from a really big card may actually drain the iPod battery before it's done. Something to consider.
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My conclusion so far is to burn my photos to CD whenever I need to!

I have a 60GB photo Ipod. I had a lot of problems with it. Frequent disk errors and 'freezes'. I sent it in for repair and Apple is now sending me a new Ipod. Hope this one works out better. I have a feeling the Ipod is simply not 'designed' to work with a PC and therefor causes PC-users more problems than MAC-users. Friends of mine who also have Ipods regularly have problems with it...But none of them had theirs 'break down' like mine. So maybe it was just a factory fault.

However, when it did work I was very happy with it.