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 Now Past Perfect has had the brilliant idea of putting its entire back catalogue of lovingly compiled albums on to an iPod Nano. There are more than 1,376 tracks ranging from Billie Holiday to the Andrews Sisters, Count Basie to Cole Porter, Fats Waller to Beniamino Gigli. And while I reckon it would cost about £600 to buy the entire back catalogue on CD the fully loaded iPod is available for just £279.97. 

Reluctant to rush into print after my previous experience, I’ve been vigorously road-testing the Past Perfect iPod for the past two months. It hasn’t jammed once, recharges like a dream, and even tells you the time. Technology has moved on since my last iPod experience - the Nano is smaller than a credit card and not much thicker and you get reproductions of Past Perfect’s stylish album covers on the full-colour screen, so you can leaf through the virtual records and pick out the one you want to play just as if it were a real LP. Indeed the neatness and ingenuity of the tiny machine is a pleasure in its own right.  

The sound quality is apparently significantly better than you will get by downloading the songs at iTunes. The default quality for encoding is 128kbps while Past Perfect offers 224kbps. The lovely Kathy also sent me two pages of absolutely idiot-proof instructions and I’m sure she’ll do the same for you if you ask her nicely. 

Time speeds by as you sample the portable delights on offer. You could start for instance with Noël Coward and Gertie Lawrence in Private Lives (strange how potent clipped accents are), move on to some classic swing and bebop and end your session with a blast of George Formby whose cheeky inanity never fails to cheer me up.  

With the extra sound quality, the iPod is full to capacity so you won’t be able to add tracks of your own, and my one niggle is that the great Louis Armstrong is seriously underrepresented in Past Perfect’s otherwise immaculate catalogue. But for those who feel daunted by technology, this preloaded iPod is a thing of beauty, wonder and unexpected simplicity, packed with music that is truly olden but golden.

This article is reproduced by kind permission of Charles Spencer - theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph, writing for The Spectator

 "Thank you for supplying me with the Vintage iPod … what service! For someone like me, who grew up turning large bakelite knobs on wooden cabinets to obtain music, the touch-sensitive controls of the iPod required some degree of re-adjustment, but after about 20 minutes the penny dropped, everything fell into place, and now I cannot put it down.The purity of sound is just exhilarating. Anyone who enjoys the music of the period but does not buy a Vintage iPod is missing a unique opportunity." 
H Wild, Norwich

"I enjoyed the iPod Nano which you sent to me for several months - the music and the clarity is simply fabulous - then I foolishly let my youngest daughter borrow then I foolishly let my youngest daughter borrow it, and now she is hooked and won't give it back. I'll have to order another ... silver please."
Mr R, Oman

"Thank you for sending the iNano which my son ordered for me. Never having seen one before, I am quite bemused by it, and I simply sit and look at it in sheer amazement!! I have a very good collection of your CDs, which in themselves are quite superb, but to try to understand how this very attractive little 'machine' can actually store, ALL the CDs I have, plus many more, is beyond me!! The tone is superb, and you could not have a greater admirer of this iNano.  Thank you very much." 
Mr E Preston, Lancashire

"Fantastic, stunning and incredible value for money. Thank you for your prompt and efficient service. You dealt with my enquiry in a most satisfactory way, and made me feel as though I really mattered. The iPod and the Past Perfect Collection is just brilliant and will be a constant companion for many years I am sure.  Thank you so much." 
Mr Wilson, Dorset

"A very clever Oxfordshire company, Past Perfect, has for some while specialised in re-engineering popular music from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and releasing it on compilation CDs and MP3 downloads. And although some might argue that the hiss and crackle of 78rpm recordings is surely, integral to mid-20th-century music, Past Perfect has proved that it is not - it's recordings are still loaded with that nostaglic, antique patina, but the engineers have transformed them from black and white, you might say, to colour.  

And now, Past Perfect has had the brilliant ruse of installing its entire collection at top digital quality (typically 224 kbps) onto a customised 8Gb iPod Nano. It has thereby solved at a stoke the next present problem you face with an older relative or friend who just doesn't need another bloomin' foot spa.
You also save a few bob; if you bought all the CDs on its Senior Nano individually, the music alone would cost over £600, against the £280 you pay this way, iPod included.  

The collection you get comprises 1,075 tracks from 290 artists ranging from Sinatra to The Andrews Sisters to Billie Holiday to Fats Waller, Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt. The are dance compilations, big bands, bebop, sax solos, second world war music and even George Formby, if you must. And you get the latest Nano's brilliant USP, the Shake to Shuffle feature by which you simply give the iPod a shake and get a new random selection of tunes.  

Seriously, you do need to consider if the person you're buying this for will be able to manage its controls. The special instructions supplied are good, but I could imagine some older people finding the control wheel too fiddly. A solution would be to buy one of the squillions of docks on the market that have bigger buttons - and a remote.
£280 from PastPerfect.com  01869 325052" 

With thanks to Jonathan Margolis, writing for The Financial Times' How To Spend It magazine