Newbie about to purchase an iPod

[ironchefmike]

Hi all,

First off, this is a great forum. Really helpful stuff, and I've had some of my pre-purchase research questions answered by reading through this stuff.

I have a question that I don't think gets much play: I just want to rip my CD's to the iPod but don't want to keep a copy of the music on my laptop due to relatively limited space. Everytime I link up to my iPod, will the songs be erased from the iPod if the mp3 is not found on my laptop hard drive? If so, is there a workaround?

Second question is regarding my firewire cardbus and uploading versus battery life. I understand that I cannot charge the iPod through my current firewire cardbus, made by Belkin - it comes with a 6-pin to 4-pin converter, but I get the feeling this wouldn't charge up the iPod, right? (Incidentally, very few firewire cards for laptops have this capability - is there a logical reason for this, i.e., is there a danger to your laptop in having that much electrical current running through your cardbus ports?) So, if I only want to upload a couple CD's at a time, how long will the battery last? People have mentioned that the battery loses most of its charge during the transfer and I was wondering exactly how much data they're transferring in these instances.

That's it for now, and I suppose once I make the purchase, I'll be bugging you about rippers and taggers and whatnot.

Thanks!

Mike

[ashawley]

If you don't have enough space on your hard drive, use one of the iPod Uploading only programs like ephpod or Xplay. The won't delete what's on your iPod if it's not on the PC.

Regarding battery life, I personally can't tell you how much tranfer time you'll get as I have powered firewire, but I hear it's not much.

You might want to invest in a PCMCIA firewire card. You can get them that have external power supplys (they hook up to an AC adaptor) or you can get one w/2 6pin ports. Use one port to connect to the iPod and connect the other port (w/an additional cable) to the iPod power adaptor--bingo, powered iPod.

Adam

[rfaison]

For what it's worth - I've been using my 20GB 2nd gen ipod for about a year with my Dell laptop - 4pin firewire connection which doesn't charge. The ipod, when fully charged, hasn't run out of juice while I transferred enough tunes to pretty much fill it up. So transferring a few CDs would be no problem at all. I haven't done a "fresh start" in a while, so can't really remember how long it took - may be doing one in the next few days though. Seems like it was roughly an hour? ... a few further considerations-

1. I've read that the 3rd gen pods don't hold their charge as long (~8 hrs vs. 10? for 2nd gen) - perhaps that might matter if filling up a 30 or 40GB ipod starting from empty.

2. MusicMatch (which comes for Windows users - but is roundly disliked by many here in the lounge, and I tend to agree) was incredibly slow in the transfer process. Both EphPod and MediaCenter 9 (which has many lounge fans) were MUCH quicker. The application may also be a factor in whether or not the charge lasts for a really big transfer of the larger capacity ipods.

3. Like Adam said - the firewire PC card can be powered (involves buying the power cord additionally - isn't that why we have Radio Shacks? :) ), or run a 2nd firewire cable to the ipod power cube. I haven't needed to do this, but it's possible.

Whatever way(s) you find work best - the ipod is an amazing little device. And you're dead-on about the lounge here, a tremendous source of info, assistance and :) :D :p

[ironchefmike]

Thanks, guys. That's a big help.

Mike