my ipod mini crashed

holy smokes! i almost couldn't believe it. my beloved ipod mini crashed...and it was pretty ugly. no, this wasn't a typical garden variety crash where one can just restore the OS and keep plugging along. no amount of restoring would bring my ipod mini back from the depths of crashdom. i'm not sure exactly what was caused the problem, but it appeared that the hard drive was hopelessly corrupted. perhaps this had something to do with the fact that it was a 1st generation 6 GB ipod mini. fortunately, the device was still under warranty which caused me to breathe a huge sigh of relief. i usually don't praise corporate america's something to be desired customer service, by i must say that apple's exceeded my expectations. i submitted a service request online and received a return mailing box and shipping label the next day! in short, i received what appeared to be a new ipod mini within a week! kudos are in order to the folks that run apple service support.