I have a Shuffle which I really like. Two big problems with it - the algorithym for shuffling sucks (I have 3000+ songs but damned if I don’t hear the same 10 songs all-the-friggin-time)(which might be OK if they were good ones, but we’re talking songs like John Cougar Mellencamp B sides, m’kay?) and the updating of it sucks.
If I plug my Shuffle into the USB port and want to completely change all the songs on it, it clears every song and then starts to copy new ones. Fine if I just hit ‘Autofill’ and walk away from my computer for an hour or two (not normal). Not fine if I do it while working (normal). As soon as I switch to a different window, the whole thing just crawls along. We’re talking 8 hours to update 50 songs or so.
So background programs are obviously relegated to lower processor allowances. Or ???
You may try assigning iTunes a higher priority through the system settings. I can’t recall if I do that with the task manager or WinTasks, but I know I can do it.
Also, it really takes an hour or so to update? I have a Nano and it probably takes 20 minutes to clear and re-load 350 songs.
Any chance you’ve got the iPod/Dock plugged into a USB 1 rather than USB 2 port? That would explain the very slow transfers. If your computer is too old to have USB 2, you can add a card for about 15 bucks.
There are a number of good sites out there talking about iTune’s shuffling algorithms. You can get a long way by assigning star ratings to all your songs, and if you poke around in the preferences, there should be some options for how shuffling is done (how likely to pick songs from the same album in order, how much weight to give the stars, and whether to repeat recently played songs or not).
I don’t know whether the shuffling preferences carry to the iPod or not, so you might want to let iTunes shuffle for you and just play “in order” on the iPod.
There is a setting in the iPod options to “Convert higher bitrate songs to 128 AAC for this iPod” which was checked. This is to maximize how many songs can be stored, I assume.
All of my songs are 160 or higher…So every time I update, it has to convert every song to 128…No wonder it took so long!
In the time it has taken to write this message, 60 songs have been transferred.