purchasing firmware(3.0) upgrade question

The purchase of the 3.0 firmware is registered in your iTunes account online. Once it's been purchased you can download it again for free at any stage.

You could lose your laptop's hard drive all together and still be able to update to 3.0 without purchasing it again once you've fixed your machine.

 

From experience with 2.0 last year, once you upgrade to 3.0 it should stay on that firmware for good until you physically downgrade/upgrade it yourself. In other words, iTunes should not remove it (for one, iTunes does not have the iPod updates bundled into it, otherwise the size of the application would be several gigabytes, but as it is it's only just under 70MB). If it ever intended to remove 3.0 from your device, it would start downloading 2.2.1 (or whatever the last 2.x firmware is), easily giving you time to cancel the download and disconnect the iPod before 3.0 is wiped.

 

I have a different question about the upgrade. We have one computer and share one iTunes account, although we have two iPod touches. So whenever we buy an app it works great to let both iPods have the app. Does the same apply to the software upgrade? Or does iTunes make each unit buy? Because that would be ironic if Apple didn't allow sharing for its stuff, but has its dev community share their software.

 

I think it would work the same way, but don't quote me on that.

 

Once you buy the 3.0 firmware when it comes out this summer, during the upgrade, your previous firmware is completly erased. As a matter of fact, YOUR WHOLE iPod or iPhone WILL BE WIPED! (complete formatting is done)

iTunes first makes whole backup of your iPod/iPhone, then it wipes your iPod/iPhone clean, then installs the new firmware, then puts the backed-up data to your iPod/iPhone.

Basically, once you install 3.0 firmware, you can't go back! The previous 2.0 firmware is gone from your iPod/iPhone for good. It's like having new iPhone with 3.0 already installed.

 

...each iPod Touch has a unique name to it when you sync it, you'll probably have to pay for each upgrade of the firmware...