using an ipod for both PC and Mac

[doctor pangloss]

I use both PC's and Mac's prefer my mac power book. But have need for a PC laptop too.
Anyway I just bought a 60G Ipod photo and want to use it between the two laptop Itunes.
The apple sales guy said as long as I format the ipod for the PC itunes I can use the ipod on the mac itunes on my PB.
Is this the correct?
Are there other considerations while considering this?
thanks,

[mad jew]

Well, if you set the iPod to automatically update songs then it'll only work with one library (effectively one computer). If you change the preferences so that you manually update songs then I think you could potentially use both. This would mean you literally drag your songs onto your iPod as opposed to having it automatically sync with playlists or the entire library each time you'd plug it in. As the Apple Store guy said though, format it for PC.

[doctor pangloss]

Thanks that's what I wanted to verify.
So I can set the new pod to do everything manually between either a PC and a Mac as long a I first format the new pod on the PC itunes. That's very slick.

I mainly got the 60G pod for additional music management but now I may use the photo storage feature too. I wonder if photo files can be swapped between the PC and Mac via the new pod?

[BenAKL]

Originally Posted by doctor pangloss

Thanks that's what I wanted to verify.
So I can set the new pod to do everything manually between either a PC and a Mac as long a I first format the new pod on the PC itunes. That's very slick.

I mainly got the 60G pod for additional music management but now I may use the photo storage feature too. I wonder if photo files can be swapped between the PC and Mac via the new pod?

Another way of doing it is by using MacDrive. Fab stuff! I have my iPod formatted on my mac and I have MacDrive installed in my PC at work. Works seamlessly!

[navigatenet]

I have an ipod 5G and live in a Windows & Mac world, with an iBook as my primary computer. When I first got my ipod and connected it to my iBook, it automatically reformatted for Mac. Later, after I enabled the ipod as an external disk, I tried accessing it on Windows by plugging it into my XP SP2 machine. Windows recognized it as a USB drive, but wanted to reformat it and wouldn't display the drive contents (I'm guessing because it's formatted with the Mac filesystem).

As a result, it seems transferring photos and other files isn't so easy. The MacDrive program looks like it would work, but at $50, that's a little much for me. Wish it was seemless between the two operating systems, but not sure if there's a way to achieve this.

[mad jew]

Originally Posted by navigatenet

...but not sure if there's a way to achieve this.

Go back to the PC and format it using the iPod Software Updater. Then, if your Mac asks to reformat it again, say no. This will work with both platforms.

As for transferring photos using the iPod photo syncing, I'm not so sure about that because I think there's a format conversion involved meaning that the photos on your iPod aren't full quality (although I think there's a preference to keep a full quality version). I suppose the easiest and most sure-fire way of transferring photos is the same as transferring other files, just make sure the iPod is enabled as a hard drive and copy across files as if it were an ordinary external drive.

[navigatenet]

thanks mad_jew--I'm gonna do this since I'd like to be able to use the ipod as a transfer device when working with Windows machines. Much appreciated!