So what do you do with an old, beat-up iPod classic? That’s the question that faced me when my brother-in-law recently gave me his old iPod classic after he picked up a new one. (Note: the iPod pictured here is not the actual iPod. His was bad but not THIS bad.)

It turns out that the iPod was crashing constantly and wasn’t holding a charge. I tried formatting and reinstalling the firmware a number of times but to no avail. It stopped crashing but the battery was completely and totally shot. So he went out and bought a new one and left his old one at our house. So what was I to do with it?

I had a few choices. I could throw it out. I could put a new battery into it. Or I could “reclaim” it.

Of course I did the latter.

The first step in the “reclamation process” of my brother-in-law’s iPod classic was to deal with the aesthetics of the iPod. As noted, his iPod wasn’t in as bad a shape as the one pictured in the post but it was pretty bad. It had been “well loved”.

Sure, the aesthetics don’t matter all that much but there’s something nice about having device that doesn’t look like it went through the meat grinder. It DOES makes a difference. Polishing it was not going to help but, fortunately, I had some MusicSkins that Larry and I had gotten when we attended their Press event announcing the new Beatles themed skins.

I slowly and carefully placed this skin on my brother-in-law’s iPod classic. It took a while to line all the pieces up but once the placement was correct the iPod classic looked pretty good. In fact you couldn’t tell old how bad of it was underneath.

The next step was to fill it with as much music as it would hold. That took just a short while.

With the aesthetic issues now addressed and the iPod filled to the gills with music I turned my attention to the bigger issue — the fact that the iPod classic would not hold a charge for more than a few seconds.

Sure I could replace the battery but that would take time, effort and money. It really didn’t seem worth it. Ultimately I chose to find a way that the iPod classic would always be plugged into an AC source. It would no longer be a portable music player but that was fine with me Instead it would offer music in one specific room in the house.

Konnet had been kind enough to send me an assortment of their latest equipment. It included their Reflex Dock. The Reflex Dock is an “All-in-1 Docking: Charging, Data Transmission, Audio output” dock that would allow me to keep the iPod charging. (It is worth noting that the $39.99 dock is also “Designed to Enhance the Speaker Quality and Mic Reception while using iPhone”.)

The Reflex Dock was perfect for this purpose. It has the sync/charging cable built right into the dock AND an audio-out port in the back. Moreover, it holds the iPod classic in such a way that it is “perched” a bit higher than it might be with other docks. That makes it easier to control what its sitting on a desk or a countertop. The white color of the cradle also goes well with the white of the MusicSkin.

Finally, I took an old computer speaker system that I was no longer using, plugged the speakers into the Konnet Reflex Dock and I was good to go. I now had close to 80GB of music available at all times in the kitchen. It was awesome… at least it did… until I gave Elana an iPod touch for Valentine’s Day… but that is another post…