Thread: Help me understand these IPOD thingys.

Help,

I am told that if I have an Ipod, I need to keep an identical copy of all the media it contains on the PC from which uploads are made.

Is this true? if I have a 120 GIg IPOD do Ireally need to reserve the same amount of space on a PC somewhere and keep a copy of the ipod on it?

I am also led to believe that if I then connect the ipod to somebody else's PC it will delete and reload from this other PC??

I really cannot believe this to be true I can't see that such a product would ever achieve market, Imagine cars that could only be sold if you have a garage for them overnight?

So Is my grandson right on this or could I add a song from another PC without changing everything else? - what software is used for this?

I really don't want to buy one of these as a present and then find they need a £300-00 computer just to use it.

I have never seen one first hand, but I can't think that it works like this. Typically similar devices connect to the pc as an extra drive and then all you have to do is copy and paste what you want onto it. Keeping the songs/videos on your computer is a good practice and serves as a backup, but your ipod is a hard drive itself (most of them anyway AFAIK) and all of them can serve as a backup by itself. So, unless something untoward happens (like dropping it in the tub for example), you will probably not lose any of the data easily, unless you purposefully delete it. If you are looking at copying the songs directly from your cd's to the ipod, then it will not be able to hold as many songs as when you first convert them to MP3 or WMA. For that you do need a pc, but that windows media player or some versions of Nero does pretty well (just make sure to turn off the protection in the options menu). If you need a program for converting songs to MP3 or WMA just drop me a pm. (actually I don't think they can play MP3's AFAIK)

He insists on keeping all his ipod data also on his PC (which is filling up quickly), I need to know if it is possible to add individual items without losing what is already on the IPOD

Originally Posted by Megabrain

He insists on keeping all his iPod data also on his PC (which is filling up quickly), I need to know if it is possible to add individual items without losing what is already on the IPOD

If it works by acting as an extra drive on the computer (as all other similar products do) then you would be able to do so no problem. Just make sure from the salesman when you go to buy it, but if the ipods do not work like this and does as your grandson says, then I'd be very surprised and will undertake an active campaign to boycott them! There are similar products out there.

The IPOD doesn't work like that. I know several people that connect their IPODs to random computers to transfer files.

I suspect your friend enabled device synchronization to a folder. If that's the case, his device will look for the folder and modify whatever is in device memory to match whatever is in the file. So if you have a sync set to c:\music, and you delete c:\music\hellogoodbye.mp3 your device will remove it from its own memory. However, if you plug in to my computer, which doesn't have the directory, your device will erase itself.

When I did a quick search, this is what I got. It contains solutions and ways to manually take care of the ipod without syncing.

h++p://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-36452.html

Ok, he says he has sync enabled but when he disables it he cannot transfer songs, your link does not seen to work as it is printed.. THNX

Originally Posted by alienmindsinc

The IPOD doesn't work like that. I know several people that connect their IPODs to random computers to transfer files.

I suspect your friend enabled device synchronization to a folder. If that's the case, his device will look for the folder and modify whatever is in device memory to match whatever is in the file. So if you have a sync set to c:\music, and you delete c:\music\hellogoodbye.mp3 your device will remove it from its own memory. However, if you plug in to my computer, which doesn't have the directory, your device will erase itself.

When I did a quick search, this is what I got. It contains solutions and ways to manually take care of the ipod without syncing.

h++p://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-36452.html

Boycott!

http://forums.macosxhints.com/archiv...p/t-36452.html

as long as you have the program 'Itunes' installed on the computers you wish to upload music from, when you plug it in to the a computer, there is an option in the Itunes window to "manual manage music and videos" in the 'ipod' option, on the left of the window under 'devices', and that will let you add whatever file you wish onto your ipod and not have to keep hard copies on your computer. and likewise, you can go to any computer with itunes installed and do the same, just upload what you want and be done with it. What I recomend, is, at some point, compile all of the information on 1 computer just so that you can create a disc backup of all of the information, just incase your ipod experiences technical difficulties.

I now find there are different IPOds, all of which I am told behave differently, it seems you cannot move your ipod to another machine and just load another tune, I cannot think of any parallel and this seems a case of apple giving the public what apple wants to give and not what customers want (I am sure there are many thousands of satisfied IPOD customers but looking around the internet it is clear that the drawbacks of this system are begining to show through). I do not own one of these and will attempt to borrow one for evaluation, the information I have printed above is mostly from internet trawling.

IPOD CLASSIC, SHUFFLE, NANO. Are there any others as well?

My link needs to be copied and pasted, removing the ++ and replacing it with tt.

There are many types of IPods, and many different hdd sizes in them. The basic types I know of are touch, video, nano, shuffle, and classic. Shuffles are the cheapest because there's no song selection, you just upload the songs and it plays randomly. Nano is a mini regular Ipod with all the same features on flash memory, much less memory as well. Video plays video and is otherwise like classic. Classic has a hard disk drive in it and plays only music. Touch does everything and tends to be smaller memory because it's flash based.

yes, the Ipod Touch. only the shuffle wont sync in other computers, the classic will. no worries there. I have a classic, and it's library comes from six machines. I don't think it will make a difference the country you buy it in. you shouldn't have a problem getting music off multiple computers, as long as they are all either mac's or windows xp or better. they just need to have the new version of itunes installed on them, free from http://www.apple.com/itunes/, and works on all pc's with windows xp or vista.

classic plays videos, 4th generation ipod doesn't. the Classic is new, I have one