When Steve Jobs made the announcement of the iPod mini during the Macworld SF keynote, I wasn’t overly impressed.

…the biggest news on the iPod mini will be the price — no matter how happy people are about having the smaller player available, and no matter how cool it is, too many people were hoping for the $100 price point. At this point, the 15Gb full-size iPod is only $50 more than the 4Gb iPod mini…is this really going to go over well? Only time will tell, I suppose, but I have to say that I’m fairly skeptical. It’ll be a bit sketchy as to whether the smaller form factor and colors will be enough of a draw to offset the reduced capacity.

After thinking it over for a few days, though, I think I need to revise that.

See, I currently have a 2nd generation 10Gb iPod, which I bought for $399 (it was the midrange model at the time I bought it). I also have an unusually large music collection: upwards of 1200 CDs, which will take up somewhere upwards of 80Gb of space once it’s all ripped onto my computer. Even if I had the money to spring for the top-of-the-line iPod, at 40Gb it would still hold less than half of my entire music library, so I’m not in a position of being able to carry around my entire music collection with me at all times.

Because of that, I’ve been looking at how I do use my iPod — and, quite simply, I really don’t use much more than a quarter of the 10Gb that I have available to me. I’ve gone into my listening habits in more detail in the past, but essentially, I carry around one 1Gb playlist, and occasionally toss one or two other specialized playlists on when I’m in a mood to, and that’s it. Right now, I’m currently using a whopping 2.12Gb of my 10Gb iPod for music, leaving around 7Gb free.

Now, say my iPod dies (heaven forbid). The more I think about it, if I do end up in a position where I need to get a new iPod, the iPod mini is perfect for my usage habits. Sure, it’s “only” 4Gb — but when I’m more than content with using just over half that space right now, why should that bother me in the least? I could spend $50 more than the iPod mini, get the bottom rung iPod, and have 15Gb available…but chances are, I’d still only use around 2Gb of it for music, essentially wasting the other 13Gb. On the other hand, I could spend only $250 (a full $150 less than the 10Gb iPod I have now, incidentally), still have about twice the drive space than I’m likely to use, and have a smaller, lighter iPod that does everything that I use mine for now.

Sounds like a damn good deal to me.

So, contrary to my initial opinion, count me fully in the camp of the iPod mini supporters. If my current iPod ever dies — which hopefully won’t happen for quite a while yet — the iPod mini will do quite well for me.

[See also: Mac mini (and more) | I’m a music whore | Madacy != metadata | There’s no such thing as too much music | Techno-lust ]

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