Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Ipods (vaguely Linux I suppose)

Rob Malpass wrote:
> Hi all
>
> Just having a chat with my brother (an ardent Mac fan) today - he
> mentioned that a given Ipod can only be registered with one
> computer. It's some sort of device to prevent copyright infringement
> - fair enough I guess.
>
> The thing is though... I thought Ipods were like any other sort of mp3
> player in as much as you plug 'em in and it's as though you have an
> external hard drive which you can drag and drop files to (irrespective
> of OS or whatever music library software you use) - so I couldn't
> really see how it could "pair itself" to one PC.

It looks like that sort of USB-drive functionality can be enabled with
some frigging, but it's not going to work out of the box with Linux and
a new iPod, at least according to what I have read. I believe mp3s
purchased from iTunes will not transfer between other iPods and/or
PC/Macs easily. I don't have one so I might be talking rubbish here.

>
> Am I wrong here? Out of interest, anyone had any success syncing
> Ipods to Linux boxes? I'm thinking of getting a new mp3 player
> shortly and I want 20+Gb so the options seem to be limited except for
> ipods.

I would recommend iAudio to you, apart from their utterly lousy support
in Europe, which equates to expensive repairs and torturous
conversations with Germans who want to charge you a small fortune for
changing a battery (50 quid!).

Speaking of the battery, it keeled over after 16 months relatively light
use - contrast this with my Creative Zen which gave me about 4 years use
without showing serious signs of degrading.

And the hard drive - it needed warranty repair after about 10 months.

Oh, and a couple of minor annoyances like the side-mounted headphone
socket and the add on needed to connect and charge it.

I'm not selling it am I?

;o)

On the plus side, it sounds terrific, it appears as a hard drive on
every box I connect it to, and it does oggs. They come in 20, 30 and
60GB flavours, are rugged and nice looking. Video support is best
described as adequate, but I didn't buy it for that so it's not fair to
mark it down on that point.

Have you considered Creative Zens? They seem to offer similar
capacities, will apparently connect to Linux machines through Gnomad2,
and come highly recommended by friends who have them. They are
considerably cheaper than iAudio and Apple products, and only down side
for me is the lack of ogg support, but then you won't have that with the
iPod either.

Sean