The Ipod Shuffle Blues

I love my Ipod. The first Ipod I bought was the First Generation. It was one of those that had controls above the wheel. I got it as they were transiting from the First Generation to the Second Generation and it was a display model at Best Buy, so I ended up getting a pretty good deal on it. It was a 20 G model, which meant it held around 5,000 songs. The most songs I ever managed to get on it was around 3,000.

Since than I've purchased a newer model. It's the 160 G model. It will hold around 40,000 songs and is in black. I've been downloading music on it since I got it and am now just crossing the 5,000 song point.

The cool thing about this is that now instead of cluttering my car up with cd cases from all the cds I had to have in it in case I wanted to listen to something I just need the Ipod. I hook it up and it plays through my radio. And anyone that knows me knows I could really pile up my car with CDs to listen to. And my stero at home has a docking station where I can plant the Ipod and just listen to it. If I put it on shuffle, which is usually how I keep it, the Ipod will just go through the 5,000 songs and pick out something to play. So I get a wide variety of music to listen to. Or if I'm feeling like a particular album all I have to do is scroll through the menu and find it and than I can listen to it.

It's a win/win situation.

Except for one thing. Anyone that has an Ipod knows that your music from your Ipod is loaded onto the Itunes page and they sync up. But if you lose this page, or switch computers - which is something I did recently - there are no songs on your computer and if you try to sync it up with your Ipod you lose all the songs on the Ipod. Now it took me awhile to fill up that Ipod with 5,000 songs and I didn't really look forward to having to go through all that again.

There is software out there that you can buy that supposedly will help you retrieve your songs from your Ipod and put them back on your comuter where everything can sync up and everyone is happy. I've went through three different pieces of software and could not get any of them to work.

I was getting desperate. My music was safe on the Ipod, but only as long as I was satsifed with just the songs I already had downloaded. If I tried to add anything to it I would end up erasing the songs already on it.

While I was at the bookstore trying to use a gift card from Christmas I noticed a small book called the Pocket Guide to Ipod & I Tunes. I picked it up and started flipping through it. I didn't hold much hope, but maybe it could point me in the right direction. Than I saw it....a chapter about forcing your music from your Ipod back onto your computer.

The book only cost $9.99, which was twenty dollars cheaper than each of those software programs cost, and I had already spent my gift card, but there was no way I was leaving that book in the store.

Basically Apple has made your songs from your Ipod inivisible on your computer and by following the instructions in the book I was able to pull the music from my Ipod and put it back into the Itunes folder in my computer.

Believe me when I tell you how happy I was. Actually at the time I only had about 4,000 songs on the Ipod. The last couple days I've spent going through some old cds and stuff and adding another 1,000 songs.

I plan to break out the phonograph player that converts vinyl to cd out and start going through my album collection. I have some albums that have never been issued on cd and probably never will, but I would love to be able to listen to them on my Ipod.

It's funny, but I hardly ever use the earbuds to listen to the Ipod. It gets its greatest use in the car.