I am the unfortunate owner of a 40 gb, 4th gen IPod that I purchased in late August, 2004. Unfortuante I say because the hard drive has failed.

I am an attorney in Atlanta, Georgia and represent a large national company handling consumer complaints that end up in lawsuit. So I very familiar with how companies such as yours may handle this type of complaint and hope that it will be to my satisfaction.

The facts are as follows: As I mentioned, I purchased the IPod in 804 and registered with Apple and ITunes. I very much enjoyed the IPod as millions of others have. In about 305 I first noticed that it was freezing up andor taking longer than usual to switch between songs. I thouhgt it may have been because I added a lot of music at once, almost filling the hard drive. I consulted the website for trouble-shooting and was advised there to do a software update. I did so, and was pleased that the problem seemed to be alleviated. However, that was shortlived. Soon, the same problems cropped up. I again dowloaded the latest update and again, the problem was solved for a short period. After two or three more updates and complete re-formatting, the hard drive died completely. You can hear the drive attempting to boot but then fail and attempt again.

I took it in to the Apple store at Lenox mall where I was informed that since it was out of warranty (by a few months), my options were limited to the following: pay Apple approximately 250 to repair it; find another on-line company that can repair it for less, roughly 150, or accept a 10 discount on a new item.

Apparently, because I followed the advice on your website and tried the software upgrades instead of taking the IPod into the store, I caused myself to lose the warranty protetction.

Frankly, I am surprised that the hard drive would last less than a year and a half. Further, this is not the only case that I have heard of such problem. Is this common? If so, did Apple know about it?

I think that this claim should be included under the warranty and Apple should either repair it at no cost or replace it.