iPods, itunes and birthdays

hjw1985

Hi all,

Not sure if this is entirely the best place to post but my husbands birthday is coming up so I have decided to redo his ipod.

He's had his ipod a while and originally had all his music on his parent's computer as we didn't have one. Through some mishap, he managed to lose all his music and so his brother gave him a random disc of all the no. 1s of all time which is now currently what is on there.

I thought for his birthday it'd be nice to redo it all - he's got the one with the big memory of 15,000 songs so it'll take a while! - we don't have a large cd collection so my plan is to put the cds we do have on, buy more cds where we would've bought them before and download a load more from the internet where i'm not bothered about owning the whole album. But I do need a bit of help if anyone can assist?

We now have our own laptop. I have an ipod as well - although only a nano - which i'd like to actually put some music on as well while I'm at it(terrible I know not to have got round to it before!) so...

1. Can we have separate itunes libraries on the same laptop? We already have separate log ins?
2. If we can, can the music I will download be used in both libraries? (Seems a waste to have to pay twice)
3. Is it best to keep the itunes library/ies on an external hard drive as there will (hopefully when I'm done) be a lot of music on there?
4. Once I've got everything on the computer, if I synchronise the ipod will what is on there now be deleted and everything on the computer uploaded automatically?

Any other advice on ipods/itunes in general would be muchly appreciated as I am a bit of a technophobe plus any tips on getting the cheapest music (already asking family etc to lend cds to the cause!).

Sorry for my looong post - it'll be a bit of a big project.

Thanks guys in advance.

gaming_guy

hjw1985 wrote: »

Can we have separate itunes libraries on the same laptop? We already have separate log ins?

Yes.

i have several windows accounts on my machine and one account has about 3 temporary itunes libraries under the one windows account.

If we can, can the music I will download be used in both libraries? (Seems a waste to have to pay twice)

Sort of.

If you rip the mp3's from CDs then it shouldn't be a problem
If you get the tunes from the itunes store then you should be able to, but it might be against the itunes store T&Cs

Is it best to keep the itunes library/ies on an external hard drive as there will (hopefully when I'm done) be a lot of music on there?
Once I've got everything on the computer, if I synchronise the ipod will what is on there now be deleted and everything on the computer uploaded automatically?

you should be backing the computer up regularly anyway, but it's always best to have a copy in two places (three or more is even better) just in case a hard drive dies or corrupts data.

not sure on the second bit

Any other advice on ipods/itunes in general would be muchly appreciated as I am a bit of a technophobe plus any tips on getting the cheapest music (already asking family etc to lend cds to the cause!).

Sorry for my looong post - it'll be a bit of a big project.

Thanks guys in advance.

you can get MP3s from the amazon store, however if you do use a service other than itunes make sure that the music is in MP3 format as the ipod cannot play WMA files as used by other MP3 players.

HTH

gaming_guy

hjw1985 wrote: »

Can we have separate itunes libraries on the same laptop? We already have separate log ins?

Yes.

i have several windows accounts on my machine and one account has about 3 temporary itunes libraries under the one windows account.

If we can, can the music I will download be used in both libraries? (Seems a waste to have to pay twice)

Sort of.

If you rip the mp3's from CDs then it shouldn't be a problem
If you get the tunes from the itunes store then you should be able to, but it might be against the itunes store T&Cs

Is it best to keep the itunes library/ies on an external hard drive as there will (hopefully when I'm done) be a lot of music on there?
Once I've got everything on the computer, if I synchronise the ipod will what is on there now be deleted and everything on the computer uploaded automatically?

you should be backing the computer up regularly anyway, but it's always best to have a copy in two places (three or more is even better) just in case a hard drive dies or corrupts data.

not sure on the second bit

Any other advice on ipods/itunes in general would be muchly appreciated as I am a bit of a technophobe plus any tips on getting the cheapest music (already asking family etc to lend cds to the cause!).

Sorry for my looong post - it'll be a bit of a big project.

Thanks guys in advance.

you can get MP3s from the amazon store, however if you do use a service other than itunes make sure that the music is in MP3 format as the ipod cannot play WMA files as used by other MP3 players.

HTH


(EDIT if this is a double post, ignore it as im having trouble with the servers
hosting the site)