What Can't You Get From a Vending Machine?

You can remove iPod's from the list of things you can't get from a vending machine. Spotted in the Atlanta Airport:



Now on the surface this seems like a wonderful idea... Almost as great as the kiosks in the airport that rent (and also sell) movies and portable DVD players. You're hanging around the airport terminal on a 3 hour layover with nothing to do, or even worse, getting ready to hop on a trans-continental flight on an airline that doesn't have in-flight entertainment worth a crap (ummm Southwest and Northwest, I'm thinking of you two!) why not pick-up a movie or two to watch in-flight on your laptop or rent (or buy) a portable DVD player to keep you from going insane while you're crammed into the middle seat at the back of a 757 for 5 hours? That makes sense...

But pick up an iPod at the airport? Why? You won't be able to use it because that brand new iPod won't have any songs on it for starters. Well that's useless... Now maybe you keep all your songs on your laptop that you're toting with you in iTunes, well then why buy an iPod at the airport? Just plug in your headphones (or if you're in Atlanta buy a set of noise canceling headphones from the Brookestone in the terminal) and listen to your tunes...

Plus, anybody who has purchased a new iPod has already discovered that a) even a small library around 5GB takes as much as 45 minutes to transfer to the iPod, and b) a fresh iPod out of the box needs to be charged up because out of the box they only have about 10 minutes of battery life on them...

So who buys an iPod from an airport vending machine?