I know that I have written about Apple before, but now I am a customer! The shuffle shown is my new music player. As soon as I had opened it up, I plugged it into me Ubuntu system to charge it up and load some songs. All my songs are in mp3 format, so that was not a problem.

Rhythmbox recognised the shuffle straight away, and loaded the songs without issue. I then used the player on my way to work. Part way there it started playing up. When I got to work, when trying to sort it out, the device locked up completely. The instructions suggest at this point that a full reset is required, which needs iTunes. Fortunately, I still have a working Windows installation with iTunes, so I upgraded to the latest iTunes, reset the device, and got iTunes to load some songs.

The device has been working just as it should since. When it comes to changing the songs, I will try Ubuntu again, and see how it goes.