advice sought: ipods

[Emma Raducanu]

I bought one of those battery replacement kits, with the little screw drivers, only they were so useless, the screws in the top of my ipod no longer have any indentation and so cannot be taken out. Music will be nothing but a footnote to my early twenties now.

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

Handy link there TSW. If I still had one (and my battery went after a roughly approximate period of time) I'd be on to them like a shot. Although if your iPod goes after 14 months, or whatever, you could reasonably sue them under the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended) - the bit that says goods must be fit for purpose. An expensive piece of kit which only lasts just beyond a year is not fit for purpose, and you'll almost certainly just get a new one out of them as soon as you tell them you're going down that road.

Ah, but the ipod was fine, it was the battery that was shit - that's how the fuckers get around The Sale of Goods Act in this case.

Dolphin - did you use ipodjuice.com?  I did some research before going with them - there are a lot of dodgy companies offering replacement kits only to supply crap batteries and/or expect you to lever the ipod open with a screwdriver, thereby scratching it to fuck.

[Emma Raducanu]

Heh, no I never. I bought it off a reputable seller on ebay. The battery itself may be fine, though I doubt I'll ever find out. The screwdrivers though failed to do their job.

[Famous Mortimer]

Ah, but the ipod was fine, it was the battery that was shit - that's how the fuckers get around The Sale of Goods Act in this case.

Motherfuckers.

[Famous Mortimer]

Anyway, I was fancying getting myself one of those iPod Touches, before I chop my credit card up. I'm a sucker for lovely technology. Should I wait? Will there most likely be a 2nd gen version with better battery and even slimmer out in a couple of months?

[shiftwork2]

Anyway, I was fancying getting myself one of those iPod Touches, before I chop my credit card up. I'm a sucker for lovely technology. Should I wait? Will there most likely be a 2nd gen version with better battery and even slimmer out in a couple of months?

I bought one of these bad boys a few weeks back and I love it.  Battery life is ok but of course nothing like the quoted 22h for audio and 5h for video, I get maybe 2/3 of that.  But then I have been playing with it constantly.  It's very slim already however surprisingly weighty due to the glass screen.

The 8Gb version is apparently selling best because people are getting it for the PDA aspect as much as a media player.  Mail works wi-fi magic with my gmail, and Calendar syncs perfectly with google calendar through iTunes.  The notes and contacts apps are excellent too.  A nifty version of Safari makes viewing regular web pages a pleasure rather than a pissing frustration, and the google maps app works well.  More stuff is coming in June with 2.0.0 firmware, although present owners are likely to have to shell out for this.  You can of course jailbreak it now if you're feeling brave.

The screen is bright, crystal clear and large enough to make watching video a pleasant rather than ridiculous experience (hello iPod nano).  The multi-touch screen is the reason people coo over it like a newborn baby - it's beautiful.  Pages have their own 'weight' and scroll with momentum when pushed.  You zoom into google maps and Safari pages with a two-fingered pinch.

As (where I am at least) the 8 Gb touch is the same price as a classic 80 Gb model it seems pretty hard to justify but I still think I made the right decision.

[Ignatius_S]

Anyway, I was fancying getting myself one of those iPod Touches, before I chop my credit card up. I'm a sucker for lovely technology. Should I wait? Will there most likely be a 2nd gen version with better battery and even slimmer out in a couple of months?

Always hard to tell with Apple's product cycles, but I wouldn't say the secong gen version is going to be too too near - the new 32GB model was only added last month.

[Mildly Diverting]

I know this is probably going to be a stupid question, so start your derision whenever you feel like it.

My old laptop has just died and I've lost all my songs, except for those still on my i-pod. I've now got a new laptop and have no idea how to import them to my new empty i-tunes account. Any help would be much appreciated...

[Famous Mortimer]

Don't use iTunes. If it's empty it'll immediately clean your iPod. I don't know which program you should use, but a Google of "alternatives to iTunes" will probably see you right.

[Mildly Diverting]

Thanks for the advise FM. Will have a search. I've got winamp, which will play directly from the i-pod, but I can't seem to find a way of saving the stuff to hard drive.

[Uncle TechTip]

Can I start my derision now? This is why iPods are bad.

Try windows examples here

[Aki Kaurismäki]

If anyone is getting an iPod Touch there is a £23 off voucher if you're a first time customer with the Apple online store or want to use a different email address.

http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/151725/code-for-23-off-235-spend-apple-sto/

Quidco is 2.5%.

£240 it works out for an 8GB iPhone that can be unlocked to any network, pay as you go in under five minutes with one click. Just use Ziphone, it works with the latest update straight out the box.

[Futurebobbers]

Can I start my derision now? This is why iPods are bad.

No it isn't, it's why you need to backup your hard drive. Hard drives fail.

Mildly Diverting, here's a way to copy your songs back onto your hard drive in Windows without any extra software, don't know how easy this is.

Anyone here who hasn't backed up their iTunes content, it's pitifully easy so do it now. Insert blank DVD, click File>Back up to Disc. It burns one or more DVDs depending on the size of your library. If you lose all your music, or move computer, you simply start iTunes and insert the disc. Everything's back the way it was.

Hard drives fail! The amount of people I know who will lose every photo they've ever taken when their HDs inevitably fail is shocking.

[Vitalstatistix]

I've been using Sharepod for a while now, and it's great. Seems to work much faster than iTunes, much more intuitive layout, simple, easy etc. No podcast capabilities though, which is a bit of a bitch.

[waste of chops]

No it isn't, it's why you need to backup your hard drive. Hard drives fail.

Oh no, my laptop hard drive's died! Good job I've got all my music stored on my 160GB iPod, I'll just connect it to my new laptop and fire up iTunes to copy all my music back.

...

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

[chumfatty]

Oh no, my laptop hard drive's died! Good job I've got all my music stored on my 160GB iPod, I'll just connect it to my new laptop and fire up iTunes to copy all my music back.

...

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

You can use idump (no joke!) to dump all you files from your ipod back onto you PC. I bought a new ipod Classic 80g recently and I managed to put the contents of my old ipod onto my laptop. Just google idump (and make sure you set your moderation levels high if you are at work fnar!)

[Uncle TechTip]

Yeah exactly. He had a backup of his songs. They were on his iPod.

There's no need to be so defensive about this. I'm sure the brand has some good points. But the inability to freely copy items to and from the device seems like a major disadvantage.

[Old Thrashbarg]

Thanks for the advise FM. Will have a search. I've got winamp, which will play directly from the i-pod, but I can't seem to find a way of saving the stuff to hard drive.

As I've posted before, ml_ipod will do what you want (and, seeing as you've already got Winamp, shouldn't be too much of a departure from what you're used to), but I'm pretty sure the inbuilt iPod support for Winamp will also allow you to copy stuff to your hard-drive.

[Mildly Diverting]

Just got back and would like to thank you all for your advise. Have now got a program called Copytrans which has worked perfectly and only cost twenty quid. 25g now backed up. I'm far too techno unsavvy to do anything cheaper.

[greencalx]

Ignore all what I wrote here a few minutes ago - I couldn't get it working properly.

The point is, when the iPod is mounted you can see all the MP3 is it in the Terminal if you go to the folder /Volumes/<ipodname>/iPod_Control/Music

Therefore you should be able to copy across using the cp command, but I haven't tested it thoroughly (as it was doing something crazy with symlinks).

[Mindbear]

I didn't reply before and I should have. I just guessed someone else would answer this. This happened to me, just use senuti (yes, it's itunes backwards), it will let you rip all the files off your ipod onto your computer and onto itunes no problems.

[mothman]

So, wait a  minute - modern versions of iTunes sync your PC music folder (mine bveing empty at the moment, since it's a new PC) and the iPod whether you like it or not? Fucking hell.

[Mindbear]

No, you just have to adjust the settings so you manually update your ipod instead of automatically. If you forget though, you can wipe your ipod.

[mothman]

OK, thanks. I've already gone through the program and turned off the more annoying bits of Apple cuntishness anyway, I'll check whether that was one of them.

[Mildly Diverting]

Okay, I'm after a little more expertise please. I've backed up my i-pod to disc and am gradually building my itunes catalogue again. Of course there are plenty of albums which I have downloaded from, ahem, various sources, where the artwork is not available through itunes and I've just googled for the artwork. But, for some reason that I can't fathom, it will store some artwork but not others. I'm doing what I think is the right thing - selecting all the tracks and then selecting 'get info'. Then I'm pasting the artwork in, but it only works about 50% of the time.

Am I being a complete idiot?

edit - found out how to do it. It'll take several hours - how I hate Apple at this moment in time.

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

So how do you do it then?

[Mildly Diverting]

So how do you do it then?

By converting all the files to AAC by selecting and right clicking on the albums. I've been doing this for three hours and I'm up to J alphabetically. If I should ever meet Steve Jobs, he's a dead man.

[Steve Lampkins]

I've had no problems with just MP3s... and if you're converting from lossy compressed files to other lossy compressed files... that's not good. You're lowering the quality.

[Paaaaul]

By converting all the files to AAC by selecting and right clicking on the albums. I've been doing this for three hours and I'm up to J alphabetically. If I should ever meet Steve Jobs, he's a dead man.

So you have to ruin the quality of the tracks to have pictures with them?
Another thumbs up for the iPod.

[Steve Lampkins]

Like I said, I've had no problems. I did it by hand, but have you tried something like this?