MUSIC MAVENS MARVEL OVER APPLE'S IPOD MINI.

Byline: Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard

Music geeks got a peek at the much-hyped iPod mini on Thursday and the word on the street was ... "cute."

`I think it's ideal for the traveler,' said Kathleen Russell, 24, while shopping for a digital music player to take with her on a trip to Germany. "I think the price could be lower."

Apple's smaller, sleeker sibling of the iPod digital music player was unveiled at the campus computer store the Digital Duck on Thursday, where it was selling for a reduced student price of $229 - $20 off the suggested price.

"We did definitely have a minifrenzy here earlier," said Elias Gayles, lead sales associate at the Digital Duck, inside the University of Oregon Bookstore.

Until Thursday, few people had actually held the iPod mini, which has been embargoed by Apple until today. Roughly the size of a half-inch pile of business cards, the player is being advertised as "the world's smallest 1,000-song player."

"I'm just going to wait until somebody loses one and then I'll find it," quipped Einar Ingebretsen, a systems administrator at the College of Business.

Amery Nevenschwander, 27, a graduate student in accounting, fingered the buttons on a pink display model, which he dubbed "pretty cool." Unlike the original classic white iPod, the mini comes in a choice of metallic pastel colors.

"I think the gold's going to be the most popular," predicted Rick Slatton, business groups manager at The Mac Store in downtown Eugene.

The Mac Store, which took in a total of nearly 700 prepaid orders for the mini at its six Northwest stores, listed silver and pink as the most popular colors, followed by blue, gold and green. Apparently, Slatton joked, Duck fans are not all lining up for green iPods.

Apple may have created some excitement for the wheel-out of its new player, but compared to the release of the original iPod, which debuted in 2001, the response was muted, said Dan Jubber, general manager of The Mac Store. He believed sales would pick up once people had a chance to see the mini.

"I give Eugene consumers credit," Jubber said. "They are very savvy. They want to see it, they want to touch it, they want to feel it (before they buy it)."

The iPod mini has a 4-gigabyte hard drive, enough for roughly 1,000 songs, while the original iPod comes in 15- , 20- and 40-gigabyte models.

So what's the big deal about a device that is little more than a glorified Walkman - and a whole lot costlier?

Matt Bliss, 22, likes the look of the iPod mini and says he probably would have bought one, had it come out sooner - before he bought his already-obsolete 10-gigabyte iPod.

"Four (gigabytes) is plenty," he said. "I don't see the average person needing much more than that."

Some say the mini is still out of reach for the average consumer, especially now that portable CD players go for as little as $25 and other digital music players sell for under $150.

"Most college students can't afford the expense," said Ben Garcia, a 23-year-old sophomore at the UO. But if he could get one, Garcia says, he'd pick blue.

CAPTION(S):

Apple's iPod mini, a digital music player, is roughly the size of a half-inch pile of business cards. It holds 1,000 songs and retails for $250.