[Carnage]

I know some of you guys have got the IT smarts so can any of you help me out-

How do I get my Ipod/I Tunes up to speed? I'm running windows XP on my laptop and using the USB 2.0 cable to link em together, but the import times are really slow. I keep getting that 'High Speed device plugged into a low speed device ' warning and the only reason I can think of is that the USB port on my laptop (pretty high spec and only a year old) is 1.1.

Could this be why? If so what can I do to fix it? Cost?

Cheers guys.

[Bubba]

Could be that your copy of WinXP doesn't have the USB 2 drivers - try windows update.

Other than that, you'd have to get USB 2 fitted - no idea how much that'd be though.

[Carnage]

Aaah that could be it, I'll give the update a bash.

Cheers Bubba  :D

[AndyR]

Could be that your copy of WinXP doesn't have the USB 2 drivers - try windows update.

Other than that, you'd have to get USB 2 fitted - no idea how much that'd be though.

I bought a firewire card for my pc - fast as fuck.

[Bubba]

Firewire is very fast - can Ipod's xfer over firewire too?

I'd quite like an ipod but am waiting for the competition to force prices down a bit.

[Carnage]

Ipod seems primarily set up for Firewire.

How much would a firewire card cost and do they transfer the info- Through the USB?

[Bubba]

Nah, Firewire is a similar but seperate technology to USB - you'd use a Firewire lead instead of a USB lead.

Just checked, and not surprising that Ipods use F/Wire coz it's an Apple technology.

Also, USB 2 is about 20% faster than Firewire which is 12 times faster than USB 1.1

About £30 I reckon for a F/Wire or USB2 card.

[DrWong]

Firewire is apple technology and your ipod will probably work faster with firewire even though USB2.0 is faster on paper.

I know that Apples implementation of USB 2.0 is problematic on mac computers ie. much slower than windows PCs - don't know if it applies to ipods but quite likely.

You can get the best of both words by getting a PCMCIA card that has both firewire and USB2 fo about 30 quid:

http://kryton.clickandbuild.com/cnb/shop/directusbstore?listPos=&op=catalogue-products-null&prodCategoryID=23

Make sure your PCMCIA slot supports 32bit cardbus - if it is a decent laptop built within the last 3 years it should be a given - if you are not sure you can check in device manager in the control panel - it should say CardBus in the PCMCIA device tree.

[unclesomebody]

yeah, i'd like an Ipod too, apart from the fact that the battery life is about 6 hours, the TOTAL battery life is about a year (and then it costs $$$ to replace), you can't do any sort of physical activity with one (because it shocks the hard drive thus rendering it useless) and they are fairly pricey!  If they fixed all that i'd be straight in there!  Plus, when you have over 50gb of music on your computer, a 20gb storage facility just isn't enough!

[Bubba]

Well, you can get 40GB versions. Think I'm back over 200GB of music or something like that now. Must start archiving it properly before I have another disc crash.

[fatboySlimfast]

The small ipods that you can only get in america(maybe?) which although havent got anywhere near the memory are tiny and very good quality

[Carnage]

yeah, i'd like an Ipod too, apart from the fact that the battery life is about 6 hours, the TOTAL battery life is about a year (and then it costs $$$ to replace), you can't do any sort of physical activity with one (because it shocks the hard drive thus rendering it useless) and they are fairly pricey!  If they fixed all that i'd be straight in there!  Plus, when you have over 50gb of music on your computer, a 20gb storage facility just isn't enough!

I know theres problems with battery life but TOTAL battery life of a year? Are you serious?  :shock: I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's had one for longer as to the score.

As far as I've heard you can do about 1/2 hours worth of the physical stuff before it plays up. I got my 15gb one just to load stuff on before I ship all my cds to Oz- Doubt I'll need more space than that

Dr Wong- Cheers for the card stuff- Will be investing in one those right away. :D

[AndyR]

yeah, i'd like an Ipod too, apart from the fact that the battery life is about 6 hours, the TOTAL battery life is about a year (and then it costs $$$ to replace), you can't do any sort of physical activity with one (because it shocks the hard drive thus rendering it useless) and they are fairly pricey!  If they fixed all that i'd be straight in there!  Plus, when you have over 50gb of music on your computer, a 20gb storage facility just isn't enough!

They do have drawbacks sure, but me and the missus just went on holiday for six weeks and used the ipod for all our musical needs (we've got a 40 gig one) - excellent when you've got a long day driving  - just start at 'A' in your song titles and listen to hundreds of songs you never knew you had.....
Plus I bought a card reader for it, so we were able to take about a squillion digi photos and bang them straight onto the ipod - fucking A.

They cache about 25 mins of music, so that's about twice as long as I can run continuously before they need to reread the hard drive, so you can run/jog/crawl with them ok - but I'm trying to persuade myself that I need a mini-ipod to do this :D

[unclesomebody]

just do a search through some of the apple forums... after about a year the battery is dead, and you have to send it off to get it replaced by apple themselves, who will charge a pretty penny for it.  There are some 3rd party companies doing it now, but say goodbye to any sort of warranty from apple!

[Carnage]

Might be able to bypass that problem I guess, with the add on battery pack. Depends where it draws power from first with the pack connected. Hmmmmm.......

[DrWong]

This dispels some of the myths about ipod batteries -

http://ipodbatteryfaq.com/

Carnage you may want to also do some research as to which firewire / usb PCMCIA cards work well with the ipod before investing in one - i have heard that some brands don't work at all

[AndyR]

Might be able to bypass that problem I guess, with the add on battery pack. Depends where it draws power from first with the pack connected. Hmmmmm.......

I bought the battery pack as well - it takes the power from the battery pack first, so it shouldn't drain the ipod battery at all (I'm sure it will drain very slightly...).

I love my ipod

[Bubba]

Plus I bought a card reader for it, so we were able to take about a squillion digi photos and bang them straight onto the ipod - fucking A.

My interest is growing...

[MrBlue]

My interest is growing...

we found one came in quite handy at college for transferring a 2gig film from one mac to another...one of the tutors had one so simply plugged it in to the emac, copied the film and transferred it to the g3. took about 15 mins or so.

pretty neat things, not that i can afford one or anything.

[AndyR]

Plus I bought a card reader for it, so we were able to take about a squillion digi photos and bang them straight onto the ipod - fucking A.

My interest is growing...

Go on, you know you want to :D

Was pretty great actually - we took about 800 digi phots at hi-res on a 4 mega pixel camera as well as loads of film clips and were able to just stick them onto the ipod - you'd need a lot of compactflash cards to do that......
Plus, when it comes to downloading them onto your pc, it takes feck all time.

CDs shmee dees, that's what I say.......

[Bubba]

Naaah, got to calm down my spending!! If I get owt, it'll be one of these sexy little things - they're tiny

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/t1.html

[jonP]

I love my ipod

Geek!

[AndyR]

I love my ipod

Geek!

That's rich coming from you!!