Ipod purchase hinges on this Question?

[justswitched]

i have asked several of my friends this question but no one had an answer...i quote this from a cnet review of the ipod:

"Three more extra treats: ....and the ability to play tunes from the iPod's hard drive while it's connected to your computer (so you can delete your music collection from your computer's drive to free up space)."

so does this mean i can store all my music on my ipod, and just stream them from the ipod when i want to play them through my computer...or will there have to be the same duplicate files on my powerbook as well?

if so its seems like a great way to conserve hd space when i get my powerbook.

 

[jxyama]

in your iTunes, iPod will show up as another library when you plug it in. so yes, you can delete the files from your computer and still play those from the iPod.

one caution: it's not easy to copy songs from iPod back to your computer. it will require some hacks - there are sharewares around for this purpose, i believe - so you will want to backup your songs somewhere else...

i personally keep two sets of files.

1) on the computer - songs i listen to the most
2) on an ext. HD - songs i don't listen to a lot but would like to have

my iPod contains a hybrid of both...

 

[sparky76]

Very easy to stream from the ipod to the Mac to play, but do remember to backup. The original CDs may look like backups if you have less than 10 of them, but price your time to re-rip!

 

[jer2665]

just my 2 cents, but buy the ipod at bestbuy, i bought mine there, and i think the four year service plan was like 75 maybe, so even right there, you're less than the cost to have apple replace your battery, and i think they send it out to be done, so that's deifnately the way to do it.

 

[Vector]

the plan at compusa is better than best buy's in my opinion. it is either three or four years and covers your ipod for everything. if it gets broken or the battery isnt charging right they will replace it whether its your fault or not and it only cost $49.

 

[Flowbee]

Originally posted by Vector
the plan at compusa is better than best buy's in my opinion. it is either three or four years and covers your ipod for everything. if it gets broken or the battery isnt charging right they will replace it whether its your fault or not and it only cost $49.

I believe the Compusa plan (T.A.P.) is 2 years.

 

[Flowbee]

Originally posted by jxyama

one caution: it's not easy to copy songs from iPod back to your computer.

It is very easy to copy your songs from the ipod back to your computer. There are several good shareware programs that let you do this.

Check out iPodLounge for details

 

[rueyeet]

And of course, make sure you've set your iPod not to update automatically from iTunes before you delete all your music files from your drive.

Also consider how to get new music onto your iPod from iTunes without going through a process of putting it all back on your hard drive, adding the new music, syncing over to the iPod, and deleting the files from the hard drive again.

Really, considering all the extra steps you'd have to take to do it this way, not to mention needing an extra accessory present before you can listen to your music on your computer, is whatever hard drive space you'd save worth it?

 

[Flowbee]

Originally posted by rueyeet
Also consider how to get new music onto your iPod from iTunes without going through a process of putting it all back on your hard drive, adding the new music, syncing over to the iPod, and deleting the files from the hard drive again.

Do you own an iPod? You don't have to copy all of your music back to your hard drive and re-sync to add new music. You just rip the music into iTunes, connect your iPod (with auto-sync turned off), then drag and drop the songs onto the iPod. Simple. Very simple.

 

[sjcaguy]

Originally posted by Flowbee
It is very easy to copy your songs from the ipod back to your computer. There are several good shareware programs that let you do this.

Check out iPodLounge for details

Is this issue (of moving songs from the iPod back to the computer) only for music downloaded from iTunes?

I'm a switcher and my new iPod should be here in a few days. I'm a little concerned reading this thread.

Let me ask it this way: if I am storing mp3 files on the iPod (not from iTunes), can't I just move them back and forth?