Firewire Ports and Charging?

[Chelce]

I am a Windows user and I bought a 4-pin PCMCIA (laptop) firewire card. I know it's probably not the powered kind, so what I was wondering was does it really matter? I mean, I've heard that syncing takes like no time, so will it really make a difference?

[ashawley]

It will make a difference because the uploading takes a lot of power from the iPod.

But, it all depends on the size of what you're trying to upload. Once you've uploaded most of your tunes to your iPod you'll be fine.

Just watch that battery, or do the initial upload in small batches.

Adam

[Chelce]

Thanks, I'll just have to do my major uploads in sections I guess.

[Shadow]

Another option is that you could get the USB cord from Apple for your iPod. This has two connectors on it. One USB and one Firewire. You could connect the USB connector to your laptop and the firewire connector the the AC adapter. This way you'd be charging the iPod (over firewire) at the same time that you are uploading songs (over USB). If you have USB 2.0 on the laptop then this would work great. If you only have USB 1 then this would result in pretty slow transfers but you could get a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card to help that out.

[shirase]

Yeah, my laptop only has a 4-pin one as well. I typically will leave at least half of the battery when I upload stuff and I only up like a gig at a time and it goes super quickly and I haven't had a problem with it. But yeah, just keep an eye on the meter and you should be okay.

[Chelce]

I shouldn't be uploading any more than 1GB at a time, heck, the iPod itself is only a 5GB, and my music collection right now isn't that enormous. I think I'll be alright, based on the things that I've heard just uploading on a full battery and then charging immediately after. Thanks guys.