How do I load an IPod

[DUD]

GrandDaughter got an IPod Shuffle for Christmas. I am using Windows XP

Home. Does anyone know how to help Me download to the ipod? I have

music on the computer. Bill

[Mrs. Wallnut]

Bill, you should be able to "import" the music to the apple site that is listed in the instructions. I have loaded my parents iPod but its hard for me to explain it...but I do remember that you have to load your music, be from the computer or CD's into the iTunes thing and then make sure the iPod is plugged in and then I believe its "export" them to the iPod.

Now if there is a problem there is the iPod site that will let you reset your iPod, to load the music into my parents I had to "reset" it and then load things onto it.

I don't know if this helps you or not but it took me a while of following the instructions and then finally resetting the iPod and starting over before I got it done. I am one of those people that I have to sit down and do it to tell someone the steps, and I haven't done anything with theirs for a while so the mind is kind of hazy.

Good luck and if all else fails then start at the begining of the instructions and go step by step, that is what I ended up doing.

[radhak]

Download ITUNES (software offered by Apple at www.apple.com or www.itunes.com), then install it. Its free.

Then you need music - you could buy songs by the album or singly from itunes. Costs $1 each song, mostly.

Or, you could 'rip' any existing music CD you might already own. Easier done than explained : Once you have the itunes on your machine, pop in a CD and click on the 'import CD' button on itunes, and be done within minutes.

You can then attach the ipod to the machine and click the 'Sync iPOD' menu option (ie, update it) from itunes. These are straightforward steps that come pretty intuitively with itunes.

Remember, you could rip thousands of songs into itunes (on your PC's hard drive), and then selectively 'sync' some of those songs to the ipod, to be updated/erased/resynched whenever you feel like later.

hope that helps - and ask if you need more info.

Edit : I now see that you said you have music on the computer. To use those, you'd still need to download and install the iTunes application, but it has options to add songs (already on the disk) or folders of songs to iTunes. Once done, you can sync the same to the iPod.

[Warren]

Got one for Christmas last year. I use the iPod software which works in conjunction with iTunes. The comnputer should sense the connection through the USB and automatically open the iPod program.

The program allows you to download from CD and the iStore. It automatically keeps a library of your music and, depending on your settings, automatically update the iPod when you put new music in the library. Or you can select it to only update certain sub-libraries you've created.

Your music has to be in the iPod format to work in the iPod library. I may be wrong on that and my daughter isn't around to coach me. I do believe that the iPod will handle mp3, but am at a lose as to whether you can handle the iPod as removable media and load it as you would a CD.

The iPod and iPod software work really well together, so my suggestion would be to load the program and move your music into the program's library. Let the program handle the updating and library management.



I'm a bit of a luddite, but the iPod is now my music source of choice in the shop. I purchased a little dock with decent speakers and it does quite nicely.

[JR]

I have a friend who got an Ipod for Christmas. She'd been experienced with an MP3 player, but had trouble getting going with the Ipod. The advice I gave her worked perfectly:

Give yourself over to Steve Jobs. Trust him. Do not try to outguess Itunes or the Ipod installation utility. Just plug it in and say yes to everything (you can say no to receiving emails and advertising).

The installation utility will upgrade the Ipod and Itunes. Itunes will find all the music on your PC and will synchronize the Ipod. They will synchronize every time you plug in the Ipod.

It may take a time or two to get everything loaded with the latest stuff, but it will all happen automatically.

Trust Steve.

JR

[LCHIEN]

...
Give yourself over to Steve Jobs. Trust him. Do not try to outguess Itunes or the Ipod installation utility. Just plug it in and say yes to everything (you can say no to receiving emails and advertising).

The installation utility will upgrade the Ipod and Itunes. Itunes will find all the music on your PC and will synchronize the Ipod. They will synchronize every time you plug in the Ipod.

It may take a time or two to get everything loaded with the latest stuff, but it will all happen automatically.

Trust Steve.

JR

yeah, that's what I had to do. I hated to do it but it works.

[PALefty]

I am in the process of ripping my cd collection to an external hard drive so I can transfer them to an iPod later. I am using an open source program called CDEX. It seems to be pretty popular and has a lot of functionality. I am using a fixed rate of 192kbps which is a common choice for a CD like quality while still offering some form of compression. Once I have them ripped to MP3 format, I use iTunes to transfer them to the iPod. I prefer to control this process. To do this, I select >File>Add Folder to Library. This allows me to point iTunes to my external hard drive folder. I then select all the files and drag them over to my iPod which is displayed in the left hand window.

If you want to copy DVD movies to your iPod, there are some other programs you will want to look into.. such as:

DVDShrink (to remove commercials etc)
AnyDVD (to remove DVD encryption)
CloneDVD Mobile (to make it MPEG4 format needed for iPod)

There are many other programs to do the same thing.. some free, some not. Perhaps others can chime in with what they use.

[lrr]

I do not own an iPod, but I use iTunes to load music on my computer for playing while I'm computing. MUCH better than RealPlayer or MediaPlayer, IMHO.

[leehljp]

Bill,

If you are not used to this, it sure sounds complicated.

1. One thing that I did not see was a warning about importing. Under
iTunes (menu)>Preferences>Advanced>Importing, - select MP3 or ACC, or Apple Lossless.

2. Do NOT select AIFF as it will import the music in huge files and will allow only a dozen songs to go the Shuffle.

3. Also, in iTunes, under the menu item "View" select View Options. Check "Kind" and "Size"

IF your imported music shows up as AIFF (under "kind") and the Size is 20 to 40 Meg in size, click on the song title, then in Menu>Advanced>Convert to MP3. This will convert the music file down to about 2 to 4 megs.

This is the way to get the approximately 250 songs on the Shuffle.

[DUD]

Thanks Hank and Everyone,

I admit that this is absolutely new to me. I can burn a CD, but putting

something on this has been My Waterloo. Bill

[DUD]

I now have music on the Ipod thanks to Everyone for Your help. I especially

want to Thank ChrisD for His help on the phone. Bill