Knock-Off iPod Nano: Tips to Avoid Frauds!
The biggest thing people are doing to attract customers is alter photos of a real ipod nano and putting those on display in their auctions. This has generated a lot of sales on their side and people and up with the style they don’t want. Just because theres many styles of this Nano like Mp4 Player I would take heed to their photos. In the photos below you’ll notice differences in all of them. frames around the screens, Writing under them, even screen size. Also how the buttons are designed on them as well. There are over 12 known versions of this player.
1. The Click Wheel – The click wheel on the iPod nano has the Play pause button on the bottom area of the wheel, Also the Mp4 Players click wheel is button interfaced, while the Nanos click wheel is scroll interfaced. The scroll wheel will be easy to identify simply because the play button is in the middle circle.
2. The Earphone Jack – The Earphone jack on the ipod nano is in the bottom right corner on the underside of the Ipod Nano. The Earphone jack on the Mp4 Player is on the bottom right corner on Side of the player.
3. The Screen – The Ipod nano has a Wider screen that is more rectangle in shape. The Mp4 player has a Square screen. The ipod Nano also has Rounded edges on the screen… The Mp4 Player has Points on its corners. Youl also notice that the Screen on the Ipod Nano has a more silverish tint when it is turned off, this is simply because the screen technologys are different. The Mp4 players screen is a dark grey to a black color when off
4. Computer Dock – Charging Plug – The Ipod Nano has a wide docking bay connector. it is a standard for ipod accessories. The Mp4 player has a Sub Mini Usb Connector on it… Both of which are on the Underside of the player.
5. Power – Hold Switch – The Top Left corner on the upper side of the players has a switch. on the Ipod Nano that switch is a hold button. On the Mp4 player that switch is an on off switch.
These are the key Physical differences in the ipod nano and the Mp4 player’s the only other difference it that the Mp4 players are 1mm Thicker than the ipod Nano.. but i dont think that really matters…. whos eye is good enough to catch that one…
MEMORY CAPACITY!
Another big problem around the bend is coming from overseas for the most part…. there have been some unlucky resellers from other countrys who have been stuck with this issue too though…
there has been a rash, and this has been with any unbranded mp4 players. many people (by the thousands) have been reporting getting Mp4 players with 128 Mega Bytes when purchasing 1 Gb players, but the players are altered to show the Computer that you have 1Gb of space…
As soon as you receive your player plug it up to your computer, open the drive and check the capacity. After you do that, Format the drive to FAT (not fat 32, this will ruin the player) a full format, this will than show your true capacity, if the capacity hasent drastically gone down in size than your good to go.
Buying Guidelines for this player!
follow these next couple of rules and you should be fine.
Avoid buying these from sellers who offer no Warranty, Return Policy, or exchange policy.
Stay away from sellers in China, Japan, Asia, Singapore ect. ect. try to buy from someone as close to you as possible, and not from overseas. There have been sellers sticking their buyers with paying the customs fees, Vat fees ect. (submitted by flaker2003: accodring to this e-bayer the VAT/customs fees are the responsibility of the buyer. but some buyers will pay the VAT fee’s with your shipping. others will mention their non responsibility for them and others will just not mention these fees at all which makes more of a headache for something you can buy locally than you really need) and the sources of the bad players have been floating around with these sellers.. i Know that most oveseas sellers dont have these problems… but alltogeather to avoid getting dupped it’s best to not go with overseas unless needed.
Fake Fakes! ( fake versions of the fake) If they are trying to sell 4, 6, or 8 Gb capacities DO NOT BUY WITHOUT EXTENSIVE RESEARCH ON THIS SELLER. the reason being is because apple has bought up most all of the 2 Gb and 4 Gb memory chips from where they are making these things…. when they say Gb the seller could be saying GigaBIT instead of Gigabyte for example: 1 GigaBIT (8 bits in a byte) is 128 Mega bytes, 1 Gigabyte is 1024 Megabytes.but they could eventually show up for real one day though…. but everyone who ive come across that bought the 8 Gb version got a 1 Gigabyte Player (128 x 8). if you want me to get any faker i could tell you about the Mp4 player that doesnt have a screen… it even has the apple logo on the front and back…. 
so stay away from the ones with the ipod logo on it that would be a very unwise choice
Video Capabilities Theres an interesting Thing about these players. different versions of the mp4 players play different versions of Video formats. Keep in mind when these player say they play video. they dont mean AVI, Mpeg, Divx ect. they mean they play 1 kind which is their Kind. Stay away from the Mtv format. if the player description says AMV or DMV it is good. I dont know much about DMV though… The best format to go for is AMV, it has the easiest to use conversion software and the file size of the movies are smaller. dramatically smaller compared to the MTV format which doesnt use compression..The Players mostly come with software for video conversion. they will convert any video format under the sun. as long as you have a codec for it. the Software may or may not be in english though.
Computer operating system and software.. Do you have an Apple PC, windows 95, linux, Be os? if you do you may want to reconsider. Most autions say these devices are compatible with Apple. well they are… you can use them with the drag and drop interface…. BUT! the software is only for windows 98 and above (sorry mac and linux users).
Headphones : These devices use a nonstandard 2.5mm Jack instead of the 3.5mm jack, unless yo want to get an adapter for your headphones… you can live with the headphones it comes with or maybe consider a different mp4 player.
The MANUAL! – it is very poorly translated english, or in a foreign language (depends where it was ment to go or where it was manufactured) its not too had to learn how to use. besides men dont need manuals!
Charger: heres a gimmie here… there also people who are giving out overseas chargers with their players… make sure you get the appropriate charger for where ever it is you may be….
