I am the recipient of a new iPod Nano, a complete mp3 player noob and have a couple questions.

Do I have to use iTunes in order to get the functionality built into the device ie the albumn cover art etc?

If I do use iTunes, can I have it installed on both my machine at work (4year old win2000 machine) and my home computer (semi recently built vista machine) so I can add songs both at work and at home?

What are the main reasons for and against iTunes? I have a ton of cd's from which to build an mp3 library so the only real reason to buy digital downloads would be the plethora of one-two hit albumns out there that I could theoretically just grab the few songs I'd want from.

Do playlists just determine a playing order on iPods or do they actually copy the songs on said playlist to a secondary location? My wife's very old mp3 player operated in the latter fashion and as one would imagine, ate up space rather quickly.

Lastly ... and I imagine the answer to the previous question would help to answer this one ... is it typical to copy entire cd's rather than sit and choose just the songs you really like from the cd's in question?

Thanks in advance for indulging my questions ... the time spent perusing the results of the search function was not entirely useful in that most of the current information was splattered throughout the iPhone thread.

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I can answer a few of them.



So far, unless someone else has some magic I haven't found yet, your ipod can only be sync'ed to one install of itunes. You can use other software (such as ipodutil) to get the mp3s off of it in other locations, but if you try to sync to a different machine, it will wipe what is currently on the pod.

This may have changed recently, as I haven't attempted it in a while, but I don't think it has.



Once you get past the interface itself, itunes is actually pretty slick. I'm not sure what it is ABOUT the interface that took me so long to get used to, but now that I've adapted to the way it thinks, I use it by default now. Particularly now when I can easily compile all of my various radio shows in podcast format in a single location to listen to in the UK.



Just a pointer to the file. It only uploads one copy.



I only upload my playlists manually. Occasionally I'll make a random playlist of "haven't listened to in a long time" songs, but generally I make my favorite lists for whatever I am going to be doing and manually put them on the ipod. I sync my photos, contacts, podcasts, and movies automatically.

Your mileage may vary. Some people like every song on an album, but those albums are far and few between for me, so a 5 star playlist is much more useful for me (using the rating system built into itunes).

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On another note. When using iTunes I've noticed that moving/organizing the music on my HDD will also wipe out the songs when I synch. Is there a non-trivial way to keep this from happening? I don't really feel inclined to use iTunes to copy large numbers of files around.

Sarissa Candyangel

iTunes relies on an XML database which tracks your library of music, videos, etc. Moving files around outside of iTunes causes the links in its database to break.

There are programs you can use instead of iTunes. I have Anapod Explorer -- http://www.redchairsoftware.com -- it can do quite a bit, but I'm not crazy about any of these programs. It will let you sync w/ multiple computers though.

What songs you choose to put on your iPod are your business. I have a (now older) 60GB and usually rip entire CDs, regardless of whether or not I'm crazy about all the songs, just for variety... but on a nano, I imagine I might be more selective.

Cool, thanks I'll give it a shot. It's annoying because I move a lot of my music around between hard drives that I take around with me. I just want something that doesn't erase everything or carry 100s of broken links.

Sarissa Candyangel

I think Winamp can handle Ipods out of the box. I absolutely hate Itunes and everything about it, so it's an alternative for my Ipod. I tend to steer away from Ipods when it comes to MP3 players because they won't let you use anything (easily) besides Itunes.