Re: IPOD Basic Questions
Originally posted by cooks4
My 15 year old daughter has asked for an IPOD for Christmas. She currently has about 700 downloaded songs on our computer.
-cooks4
I will do my best...
1. Can these be transferred onto the IPOD?
Find out what kind of files they are. The songs on a CD are a kind of file called AIFF - just go with me on this. AIFF is an uncompressed file, meaning even silence takes up disk space. There are other files that actually compress the file to much smaller size because they throw out things like silence, or frequencies that are silent. The mainstay of this kind of file is mp3. mp3 is a file who's type is controlled by a standards body known as MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group), not by a single company (this is a good thing).
Conversely, there is a file type which sounds just as good, but is controlled by a company. This is the WMA format from Microsoft.
mp3's and AIFF's are transferrable to the iPod.
WMA's are not.
Look at the file name extension of the song files, that is the easiest way to tell.
AIFF: "filename.aif"
mp3: "filename.mp3"
WMA: "filename.wma"
2. Do you have to subscribe to ITUnes in order to download the music or can you use any source?
You do not have to subscribe to iTunes at all - for any reason. the iTunes application itself is free. The use of it is free. The only thing one would have to pay for is buying songs from the music store, which is a pay-per-song/album model.
Your daughter can transfer her [compatible] song library to iTunes by simply drag-and-drop to the interface.
3. We have a Dell computer that is about two years old....will it be compatible?
In a word: yes.
4. I have no idea what Firewire..etc is........is this a complicated process
Well, the iPod doesn't
have to use FireWire, but it is designed to primarily - read: it will provide the best experience. It comes with a FireWire cable, you need to purchase a USB (the little flat-looking port) cable separately for your machine - unless you bought a FireWire PCI card for it.
FireWire is not what is used for connecting Keyboards, Mice, Printers, and Scanners - USB does this (again, that flat port). FireWire is a very fast, very smart connection for devices that require fast connections, like Video cameras, iPods, Hard drives, Music Capture.
One caveat: There is a new version of USB called USB 2.0, which is designed to be as fast as the original FireWire (called FireWire 400 these days), but still had its 'clunkyness' - e.g. not as smart.
5. Is the 10 mb sufficient?
Disk space? Probably, but the better bang for the buck is the 20. For $100USD more she would get twice the space, a dock, and remote. To buy the 10, then the dock and remotes separately, you would equal the price of the 20.
One tip: All Hard drive manufacturers - including those that make the little ones for the iPod, play a semantic game with the HD size. When the marketing department says 10gb, they are saying it has 10,000 megabytes, and when they say megabytes, the are really saying a megabyte is 1,000 kilobytes, and so on.
Be aware that there is a significant difference between marketing and technology here. Your computer will pay attention to the technological truth - not the marketing one.
The technological truth is that a gigabyte is actually 1,024 megabytes, and a megabyte is 1,024 kilobytes, which is really 1,024 bytes (computers count in factors of two. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024)
This being said, a drive that is marketed as a 10gb drive actually is 9.31gb - and that is the figure the computer will show.
