One question I see a lot from people considering buying an iPod Touch is “Is the 32GB big enough or should I get the 64GB?”. As of right this minute, the choices from walmart.com are:
8GB = $168.54
32GB = $255.54
64GB = $341.54
That’s an $87.00 difference between the 8GB and the 32 GB. $173 between the 8GB and the 64 GB.
I received my iPod Touch for Christmas ’08, so I’ve had it a year and a half. And it’s a 2nd gen 8GB. (Or, more exactly, a 6.83 GB. It was 7-something until the 4.0 upgrade.) I plugged it in and grabbed a screenshot of the bar so you could see a visual of my iPod’s capacity.
It’s a little hard to see, so I’ll break it down:
Audio: 2.06GB — I have 279 songs on it, 58 of which are actually hour-long RWA workshops.
Video: 491.4MB — It says I have 4 videos. I have all three acts of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog on the iPod. I have no idea what the fourth one is.
Photos: 7.4MB — I have 46 photos on it. Screenshots, book covers and my very favorite family photos (the few I might want to inflict on random people).
Apps: 953MB — It says I have 74 apps. (20 or so are games. Some have higher end graphics than others, but none are what you might call hardcore gamer apps. That would make a difference. But I’ve got Word Warp and Air Hockey and Yahtzee and Tetris and SIM City and a bunch of others.)
Books: 10MB — I think the only thing classified as “books” by iTunes are one audiobook and the free copy of Winnie the Pooh that came with the iBooks app.
Other: 790.5MB — I could be wrong, but I think this is where the data (if that’s the word) for the apps is stored, so that might be my books. If so, here’s the book count:
Stanza–142
Kindle–98
B&N eReader–32
Kobo–7
eReader Pro (which I don’t really use & are mostly duplicates of Stanza library)–69
Free: 2.58GB — All that white space is still unused.
221 songs. 58 RWA workshops. 46 photos. 348 books. 74 apps. And a lot of unused space left.
My iPod Touch is my everything. It’s never more than a few feet from me and it’s my life planner, my entertainment, my work, my relaxation. Everything. And I’ve never wished for one with more memory. Granted, I don’t carry my entire music/photo/book library around with me. I tweak music playlists and change them up to keep things fresh and with each book. As I get bored with songs, I remove them. I load groups of books as I think I might want to read them and delete them as I do. I’ve got a bunch waiting in Calibre I don’t feel a need to carry around.
If you’re the kind of person who wants it all with you, you might want a bigger one. But my recommendation? Buy the 8GB and blow that $87 (or $173) on books.
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Yeah I had the 16 gb 3g iphone and I just bought the 16gb Iphone 4. I’ve never come even close to using up all 16gb, and I have like 650 photos on my phone, plus a ton of apps, books, etc. I don’t stream a ton of video or download a bunch of video, so if I did that might make a difference, but the 16gb has always been plenty for my use. Anything more seems like a waste of money to me.
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I’m saving my pennies for a 64 gb. Why? Because I have no room for my songs. My 8 gb will only hold 900, and I don’t want to have to go back and forth to sync. I want them all there!
I have no videos. No photos. Almost no apps.
Here’s how mine breaks down:
Audio 6.36 gb
Apps 378.9 mb
This is TEN apps. That’s it. No games. And those include Facebook, Dictionary.com, Wikipedia, IMDB, Kindle, and Echofon, none of which I can live without, LOL!
Other 82.5 mb
If this is the data stuff, I have 200 Kindle books. Nothing more.
Free 193.9 mb
Yeah, I need more room.
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SelloutWoot has the 32 gb today for $220: http://deals.woot.com/sellout
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That’s a great price!
I’d go nuts with that many songs on there. I like mine organized into neat little playlists and that’s it. I removed the playlist Undeniably Yours and added a few songs to the one for DG4. My Christmas music playlist is on there right now because I’m doing a novella. And I’ve got a mellow housecleaning playlist and a “dance” housecleaning playlist. I switch out songs as the mood takes me.
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I only have a couple of playlists, and I never listen to music when writing. I mostly use it when walking, so I just set the whole thing to shuffle because I love the surprises!
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I find if I have any more than my favorite songs du jour on there, I spend more time skipping than I do listening to music. Now that I can, with the iOS4 upgrade, make playlists on the fly, right on the device, I might be tempted to start carrying a little more music with me, though.
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Thanks for this info. Really helpful stuff. I am considering an IPod Touch. It MUST do my calendar, contacts and task list. I want some music on it, but I don’t have a huge library. I will want a few games. The idea of books is new to me – and I love it. (Hard to read on that small a screen?) A few photos – but I’m a digital scrapbooker, so photos won’t be a huge deal. The one thing I’m wondering about is if I want to occasionally rent a movie – like for a trip – will I have enough room for one full-length movie. Thanks for sharing! Very helpful.
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Hi Lynn!
The iPod Touch comes with a calendar app, which I have synced to Google Calendar (which is what I use). And I have a shortcut to Google Tasks for my to-do list, but there are a ton of to-do apps in the app store.
I read on my iPod Touch very happily for two years and I have friends who read very happily on their iPhones, but I also know people who won’t. The nice thing about it is that the Kindle app is free and there are always some great Kindle freebie books, so you can try it for a while and not be out any money if you don’t like reading on the smaller screen.
It sounds like with your usage you should be fine. I’ve never rented movies from iTunes, but I did buy Independence Day when it was on sale for $4. I had that on the iPod with no problems. But that was probably in the first six months I had it. Now it’s so full of music and apps and books, I’m not sure I could fit a music video on there, never mind a movie. (But I’m lazy and haven’t gone and deleted a bunch of stuff I really don’t need on there anymore.)
But you can see up above how much stuff I had on it at the end of June and it said I had 2.58 GB free. According to iTunes, the movie Knight and Day (for example) is 1.72GB. Plenty of room.
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Thanks so much!