On Wednesday, Apple Computer announced the iPod nano digital music player. Priced at about $199 with 2 Gigabytes and $249 with 4 Gigabytes of memory and available in either white or black, it's an incredibly cool replacement for the iPod mini.

I agree with Walter Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal who reviewed the iPod nano and said:

{The} nano has the best combination of beauty and functionality of any music player I've tested -- including the iconic original white iPod.... I loaded the entire 16-hour unabridged audio version of "The Da Vinci Code" onto my test four-gigabyte nano and still had room left over for 1,128 songs, plus my 24 photos, a couple of podcast episodes and about 50 contacts copied from my computer's address book. That's more than enough material for most people....

I definitely think that the iPod nano has enough capacity for my typical uses of an iPod. (I bought a 10-Gigabyte iPod for Kathleen as a Christmas gift a couple of years ago, but I get to use it often because she tends to leave it at home during the week.) I like to listen to audio books from Audible and relatively small music playlists that are matched to some of my activities. I think I would use an iPod more often if it was the size of the iPod nano.

I like the iPod Shuffle and was considering buying one for myself, but I doubt I'll spring for it now. The nano's color screen looks amazing. With the increased capacity, cool new shape, and light weight, the nano will be hard for me to resist.

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