Since I didn’t see this answered anywhere:
Not really. Early iPods were kinda funny about their batteries, they’d have to be completely discharged before being recharged. Recharging early would wreck the battery, possibly rendering the iPod unusable. I’d avoid used ones for this reason.
I have a 20 Gig iPod from Best Buy, it was either this or get satellite radio. I went with the less expensive option, put my entire library on it, and still have about 10 Gig free.
w00t! My iPod arrived! All 1,163 songs I currently have on iTunes are loaded.
My first CD was Synchronicity by The Police. In honour of my first digital music, the first song I played on the iPod was Synchronicity (I).
To be fair, if you use an iPod Shuffle with iTunes, iTunes has an option called “Autofill,” where it will automatically make a new selection of songs (as much as you tell it to store, anyway) and stick them on the Shuffle for you. So while you’re carrying only(!) 100-some-odd tunes, they don’t have to be the same tunes every time, and you don’t have to pick which 100 to put on it.
That’s a process that takes several minutes, and it causes a loss of sound quality. Why should I have to use up one of my CD-Rs, or wear out a CD-RW, just to translate a file I paid for into the format that’s been the standard for digital music for years?
iTunes is perfectly capable of changing AACs into MP3s on its own. That feature is simply disabled for songs purchased from the store. The only conceivable justification for making users jump through these hoops is to make iTMS less convenient for people who don’t own iPods.
No, the justification for restricting the iTMS AAC files is that the record labels wouldn’t participate without some attempt at limiting unauthorized duplication of the songs. DRM’ed WMA files are, as best as I can tell, just as restrictive for the same reasons.
If you are downloading music to your iPod, do you have to do it on your own computer or can it be done on any computer? Is it ok to use dial up or would that take forever?
Any computer should work as long as it has iTunes. I don’t know about downloading music on dial up though being as I’ve had broadband for the past five years.
Thanks **Lute Skywatcher[/B. I’m so jealous of you with your broadband! 
I have got to join the 21st century! 
Apple lets you “authorize” up to 5 (IIRC) computers to play back the music you purchase from them, as well as an unlimited number of iPods. The iTunes program has a command to “deauthorize this computer” if you want to unregister a computer as well (say, before you sell it to someone else).
And the iTunes Music Store has an option to use a shopping cart, so you can load up on stuff as you wish, then do the buy-and-download when it’s convenient for you. I prefer this because it removes the temptation to impulse-buy new music.
I appreciate all this information. Thank you everyone (including/especially my fellow travelers from centuries past).
Is the Apple Store the best place to buy an iPod? I am asking if there is any qualitative difference (Guarantees, service plans, extras) that you might miss by going a cheaper BestBuy/Costco route for the same product.
It doesn’t sound like many of you are into Podcasting. Is it not that big a deal/is it a gimmicky thing not worth the effort (In 2015 will this question cause me to cringe like my ‘88 MPSIS post “My New Acid Washed Jeans Are Perfect!” or “my ‘77 CS post “Is there anyone cooler than the Fonz?”)
I want to sincerely thank you all again for the replies and links – they all helped.
It’s such a half-assed attempt that it hardly qualifies, IMO. iTunes makes no attempt to keep people from ripping iTMS tracks that they’ve burned, and Apple even tells people how to use the burn’n’rip method to circumvent the protection.
I’m sure you recall the brouhaha when Real announced they were going to offer songs from their own music store to iPod users by using Apple’s DRM. Why else would Apple have objected, if not to maintain the lock-in between iPod and iTMS?
Feel free to comparison shop. You can also get iPods at Target, Wal-Mart, and from various online electronics stores.
I can’t get into it, since I don’t have an iPod. 
But the folks who like it consider it roughly equivalent of “TiVo for radio,” so I can see where the appeal is. You get your podcasts, then listen to your favorite audio shows at your convenience.
No picking required - either you’ve already set up various playlists for various moods, or just use the Shuffle feature and a single click fills up the device with random tracks.
Either way you fill it, you just play through in the order downloaded or random order. Presumably if you didn’t want to listen to the song you wouldn’t have it available for download to the iPod. You can easily skip over a track if you’re not in the mood for it when it comes up.
What effort? While recharging the battery, a single click starts the fill process and it will be finished before the battery is recharged.
This is a bit of a hijack - but do newer car stereos come with any easy way to connect to your iPod or MP3 player so you can listen while you’re driving? Seems like an obvious extension.
I suppose you could use one of those things that connects to the car’s cassette player (Papa Zappa uses a portable CD player that way) but that’s so clumsy.
Eh. I don’t get this mood-based playlist business… if I just want to hear a certain mood or genre of music, I can turn on the radio.
I imagine being over at a friend’s house, getting into a conversation about music, and wanting to play a song from my MP3 collection as an example. (“You like Travis, huh? Maybe you’ll like Camper Van Beethoven. Listen to this.”) Kinda hard to do that with no display and only limited capacity.
Cool - thanks! Jimmmy is definitely not the only iPod-less dinosaur on this board (What’s with these new-fangled punch cards, you young whippersnappers!) but I’ve been starting to feel music-envy
I use it regularly to listen to Air America Radio shows. The Rachel Maddow Show is particularly good - it’s on the radio at 5am Eastern, so the latest edition is usually sitting on my PC’s hard drive by the time I leave for work at 8:30 Central. (Though not always - I’m not sure if it’s the network, or whether they’re just late putting it online.) Air America shows are also available for streaming, but the podcast files seem to have better sound quality.
Funny you should mention this. Punch card technology is making a comeback, the new method doesn’t actually use cards but rather (IIRC) solidified cornstarch. This allows for the correcting of mispuches.