I love my iPod as I have mentioned before. I now listen to it almost exclusively and whenever I am out and about with just my own thoughts with a podful of podcasts.

The thing that I have been quietly nervous about is that the amount that i have been using it exceeds the number of daily hours recommended to get the most out of the iPod battery life. Before the podcasts I really had no expectation of listening to more than a couple of hours a day of music. Now however I need to listen to that much just to keep up with all of the feeds that I listen to.

As a result I have been seeing the battery time get gradually shorter and shorter, with the battery indicator sometimes displaying half full before suddenly crapping out at the most undesireable times. This is particularly annoying when I am out for a run, 20 minutes into a 60 minute course when suddenly my head is assulted with the silence of empty speakers.

These shortened times between re-fueling are now becoming a more noticeable issue. I listen to about 2 and a half hours of podcasting now before the battery winks out. At the end of the week I will be traveling overseas (more on that later) which would be a great opportunity to blast through some backed up podcasts while I am on the plane but if the battery craps out before we taxi out I will be very disappointed , to say the least.