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If you are in the market for a new Apple iPod, you may be enthusiastic at the idea of putting it to use immediately. However make certain that you are aware of how to keep your new iPod running and looking great for years to come. Specifically because a brand-new Apple iPod is going to cost you more than just a few dollars, you want to make certain that your doing everything possible to take proper care of it, so you do not end up throwing your hard earned money at a newer one sooner than you wish to.

Here are a few pointers to keep you or recover from possibly one or more of these likely problems in an Apple iPod; one main problem being that of a dead battery. If you wish to maintain your Apple iPod without being chained to a plug, you need to keep your battery in good running condition. While Apple works hard to build a product with a battery life that is long-lasting, the fact is that now and then batteries do wear out unfortunately.

While this is definitely something that is not desired, it does happen occasionally, and you should be mindful of what steps to take if it does happen, as well as what are the best ways to minimize the risk that your battery will wear out anytime soon.

One good rule of thumb is to have your Apple iPod kept away from temperature extremes. Even if you plan to be in a bank or grocery store for just a few minutes, do not fall for the temptation of leaving your iPod inside of your car, since extremely cold or extremely warm temperatures has the capability of damaging your battery. When your Apple iPod is not in use, make certain to keep it in sleep mode so you are not having the battery rundown.

In the Event Your Battery Does Run Dead

When the first Apple iPods were introduced, the option of having replacement batteries was not offered. In place of that, Apple's expectations for consumers were that by the time they needed to replace a battery, you, as a user, would buy a refurbished Apple iPod at a significant price.

After some very highly publicized complaints from consumers in regards to battery problems, including a class-action lawsuit, Apple designed and developed a battery replacement program which costs much less than the original cost of repair an Apple iPod that had a dead battery.

If your looking to try the do-it-yourself route you should have a battery that will have a longer life on each charge. There are third-party manufacturers that do offer replacement kits that have batteries that very often exceed the power of the batteries that the Apple iPod comes supplied with.

It is important to keep in mind, though, of some difficulties that some models have: IPod Nanos have batteries that are soldered onto the main board, and the latest iPods have batteries that are glued to the back plate. Even if you happen to not own one of these two models, be cautious when you handle the battery yourself. When in doubt, your battery replacement should be done by Apple Computer.

However, if you follow some of the tips listed above and use some care, the battery in your Apple iPod will have a very long life.

Listen to Korbin Newlyn as he shares his insights as an expert author and an avid writer in the field of electronics. If you would like to learn more go to Ipod Reviews and Accessories and at Refurbished iPods

So what's is the relationship between bandwidth and latency? If your internet connection speed has the proper bandwidth, why does latency slow it down? Or does it? Just how exactly does latency affect your internet? These are just some of the common questions asked......what follows is some answers in both technical and layman's terms.

Latency is the time it takes your data (packets) to get from point A (your house/modem) to point B ( the destination). Latency happens because of each of the "stops" your data has to make on the way to point B. These stops, called hops, are the different routers and in some cases servers across the internet that handles and routes traffic accordingly. The more hops that get added into the route of your data, the higher your latency will become. The farther away point B is, typically higher latency is experienced, simply because there is more distance and hops encountered. Also, each of these hops can also become busy so to speak, therefore the busier they get the more time it will take them to respond to your traffic requests, hence higher latency.

Most file transfer over the Internet uses TCP/IP. The receiver constantly sends messages back to the sender (ACKS) letting it know all is will or if not which packets need to be resent. If the channel has high latency this reverse communication take too long causing transmitter to stop sending until ACKS are received.

TCP also has a slow start mechanism. The sender has no idea of end-to-end channel capability. A slow start is designed to prevent overwhelming intermediate slower links.

Esentially, your bandwidth is the speed between you and your ISP, anything outside that, your ISP has no control over.

Actually, latency may or may not be an issue. Because latency is the delay between getting information from point A to B, it's much more of an issue in interactive applications then large transfers.

With large transfers, if your bandwidth is sufficient, reliable, and properly configured, you won't notice much of a latency issue with high latency connections. Once the "pipe is primed", the data is flowing at full speed. As long as the ACK packets are returned at a regular interval frequent enough that retransmissions don't occur, the flow will be steady and the only delay is really just during the initial startup of the transfer.

However, with interactive applications, that initial delay is what really can kill you. While it's exaggerated, say you have a 1 second latency and sending a packet takes 1 second. If you are sending a file that's 10 packets long, your total connection time is 11 seconds. If you are sending a single packet and waiting for a response back of a single packet, and you do this twice, your total connection time will be 8 seconds but yet you only sent 40% as much traffic.

Web traffic is kind of in between the two. It's not typically a large transfer, but it's not highly interactive like a online game. Typical page traffic is short bursts of requests (high latency) followed by longer periods of inactivity while you look at the page. There are a few tricks that can be done to help reduce this as an issue. There are proxy servers and pre-fetch utilities that will "preload" the page for you. During that time where you are looking at the page and your connection is setting idle, the prefetcher can download pages that the current one is linked to. When you request one, hopefully the page has been cached and can be displayed much quicker. If not, you are no worse off then having to wait for it to be loaded. This can work good for more static pages but if you are looking for something for dynamic pages (e.g. Google Maps), a prefetcher doesn't work as well or at all. Also, checking to see if your browser is using the appropriate number of connections can improve things.

The bottom line is there is a relationship between bandwidth and latency. But it may or may not be an issue.

Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications....including DS3-Bandwidth.com. Michael also authors Broadband Nation where you're always welcome to drop in and catch up on the latest BroadBand news, tips, insights, and ramblings for the masses.