Well not much of a brick more a 80gb portable usb hard drive. I got a iPod 80GB classic in a swap for a Dreamcast and a couple of games, although I am starting to think he saw me coming. The Ipod seems to work, it's being a nice portable usb hard drive but if I want to use it as a media player I seem to be stuffed. I don't want to install that garbage itunes, as it's a classic I can't install rockbox, yamipod doesn't want to know unless i install and run itunes at least once. Anyone got an alternatives, apart from sell the wretched thing? At least I have a proper MP3 player that I can just drag and drop files to and it'll play them, drop photos on and it'll display them, etc...
There's a plugin for Winamp - search the Winamp page, I can't remember the name offhand. *EDIT* looks like it might have support "out the box"? http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/07/how-to-use-winamp-to-manage-your-ipod/ Someone says they had a problem when iTunes updated their Classic, though - it stopped working in Winamp. Take a look at this, though... http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=278372
So what's the problem with installing iTunes for a little bit to get the thing up and running exactly?
Yeah, you can just use itunes for transferring or whatever. It's not going to kill you. I do it with the Zune. Works fine for transferring.
iTunes is bloatware. It sticks crap on your system that's permanently running and looking for an iPod. I can understand why he doesn't want it on there.
Bloatware was a curse of the 90's. Computers today aren't going blink an eye if itunes runs a little spyware now and again. It just seems silly to declare an iPod bricked just because the user has an irrational fear of itunes.
I had many troubles with iTunes before, about a year ago a friend of mine got an old Motorola phone which only could get music uploaded via iTunes and asked me for help. Took the installation cd (included with the phone), installed it on XP and voila! Didn't work. "The computer must be too old" I thought, we took the phone to my home, downloaded the last version of iTunes and installed it under Vista, it worked. Connected the device, started transferring music and after a minute or two the app crashed. And not only that, when I took the phone I noticed the player in some way corrupted the phone's file system! Well, having ranted enough, I recommend you to use Songbird (http://www.getsongbird.com). If you haven't heard of it it has iPod compatibility, looks like a combination of iTunes and Winamp, has tons of features, it's open source and it uses the Mozilla engine, which is great in the stability, resource-consumption and extensibility sections (There're lots of Firefox extensions available for Songbird, besides the Songbird-exclusive ones). As soon as the new version comes out (which includes equalizers and automatic media scanning), Winamp will get the hell out of my computer.
I always used to cut this off in MSConfig ("ITunesHelper" or somesuch, along with its shitty Quicktime buddy). Since I have a Mac now it's kind of a moot point, since iTunes sucks considerably less in OSX. A lot of people also like Songbird, as z_killemall mentioned. I've also heard it's a resource hog, so it just depends on what sacrifices you're willing to make. I've looked for the "perfect" iTunes replacement, and I never found it.
That sounds pretty rough going, iTunes on a Microsoft OS can be a real headache sometimes, it seems to have issues with installer 3.1 and the newer .Net frameworks however I would imagine many cases are isolated to machine configurations etc. I'm really not trying to sell itunes here it's just that he needs it to get started so install it set up the ipod and then uninstall. How hard can it be? It bothers me when people are set against something for no real reason. Reminds me of my best mate a few years back he loved the look of Killzone but wouldn't play it with me because it was made by sony and he was strictly an Xbox man...
I think I didn't express myself correctly, the point I tried to make here is not that iTunes is a bad player, what I mean is it's poorly ported to Windows and that leads to compatibility problems. Probably the Mac version is a lot more stable, however I'm not able to try it so I don't know... I don't like to go strictly for a brand or app in particular, everytime a new version of a music player, browser or another program like that comes out I install it and check it out. I'm always looking for the program that fits my needs and expectations better (in fact I keep installing new versions of iTunes with the same compatibility results), but for the moment I find Winamp as the fastest, most versatile and easiest to use player. I love Songbird but until they add some features and improve the speed (I find it a bit slow yet, anyway great speed improvements have been made in latest versions) I'll stick with Winamp, I guess.
I have no issues with iTunes on a mac but I do agree that the windows port is a mess, there are features missing and the fact that cover flow struggles on even the most powerful systems proves that something isn't quite right with it. I used to use SonicStage and Winamp when I used windows for my Md player and my iPod respectively.
I found that J River Media Centre did enough to put a couple of files on the ipod so I could use Yamipod to put files back on. Itunes is far too bloated, slow and crap on windows, it would be nice if they could make a lite version for people who may just want to transfer music to the device. Itunes takes up over 200mb of space and does install a lot of other crap like quicktime as well as that stupid shop. However after a few days use I come to the conclusion that the ipod is an overpriced piece of garbage and the much cheap sandisk player I have has much better sound quality, is easier to use as it supports drag and drop play and has a radio and has much better battery life. So I'll be whacking the thing on yahoo auctions...
Not used Itunes in about a year for the simple fact that i use Media Mokey for listening to and managing my music on my PC and you can drag and drop tracks onto an ipod just like any other standard mp3 player. If i could get Itunes just for drag and drop transfering then i'd be happy becuase all i do is buy cd's and eventually rip them to mp3 for use on my computer and ipod and thats what i've always done for every mp3 player i've had. I actually think compared to using sonicstage on my sony HI-MD itunes is miles better as that was the bain of my life before i got a proper mp3 player.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Media_Player_Classic.htm + http://www.creative.com/products/mp3/ or http://www.iriver.com/ or http://www.archos.com/?country=global&lang=en Take your pick - none need iTunes to upload media files ;-)
