What's on my IPOD?

Ok, I actually don't own an IPOD but a have a ton of MP3's and CD's. Probably own about 200 CD's.

Probably have about 80GB of MP3's. Got them at lanparties and while I was deployed in Uzbekistan. A lot of stuff was shared informally on our military server. Half of which I just deleted. The other half I listen to only when I'm away from home or on duty.

My owned CD's consist of a pretty wide variety. Everything from the Violent Femmes, Bach, Jane's Addiction to U2, Dave Matthews Band, and the Bodeans. I will buy good CD's with a proven history. Prefer that over MP3's which tend towards low quality.

My buddy uses iTunes a lot along with his IPOD. He has the car adapter as well. Sounds pretty sweet. Only thing I have against it is that you can't easily back up your music on an IPOD. Or maybe I'm wrong on that.

I have an ipod and i can't imagine how I had gone so long without one. I spend a majority of my day on campus, which is a good 3 blocks from my apartment. Between lots of sitting time, walking time, or library time, it comes in handy. What I love is having every song I could possibly imagine wanting to hear out of my collection in my coat pocket and it's easier to manage than a discman and 150 cds in wallets (that have a tendency to get scratched over time). For the long trips home (I live about 3 hours from my school) or even to and from work, a $35 FM adapter comes in real handy, and I don't have to worry about anyone jacking my cd player and all my cds from my car anymore (which is an easy possibility in this town).

When you mention "backup", I have two backups actually. Every single song I own is on my school computer, which makes things incredibly efficient and quick when transferring in and out songs to the ipod. However, I also have hard copies of everything as well, as you can never be sure when you might get your HD wiped or even want to loan an album to a friend. What I owned pre-ipod are sitting in their cases on a shelf at home and not taking up valuable college-apartment (read: very small) space. What I owned post-ipod (read: downloaded from the school server or torrents) is burned to mp3 discs/dvd-r discs so I don't lose them in case of emergency. It sounds like a lot of work just to keep track of your music, but as a music major and self-diagnosed music-addict, I can't imagine losing any of this collection.

That's my $0.02 on ipods. If you're not sold on laying down the bread for one of the 40gb or even not an apple fan at all, I'd at least recommend a smaller space capacity and see how you like it. It hooked me REAL quick.

I may get a 20GB Rio or something different. I'm also a backup nut. Between my roommate and I we have about 2 terabytes of storage. 1 tb of that is backup. Probably overkill but it is cheap to buy 250 GB HD's.

Only stuff I really can't stand is hard rap and country music.

Mine's an iRiver 20GB. It also records - very handy for me and functions as a USB external drive too. None of that iPod nonsense of having to install software or tag files correctly - they just go into the machine in directory structure with filenames. Lovely. I'd recommend one for anyone who's got the money and thinking about spending it on a hard-disk personal stereo.

I've got well over 250 CDs of audio on it and with 2.5hrs worth of commuting a day (a large chunk of which is on foot) I'd hate to be without it. I used to carry around a pocket full of minidiscs....

Just one question. Does anyone ever use the shuffle function on these things? I mean, I listen to what I'm in the mood for (usually fast and loud). Do other people have "random" moods?

For the most part I'm always on "random" mode, only because I set a playlist of my favorite songs and just leave it on shuffle, that way I don't have to go through a whole album at a time listening or randomly hit a hidden track or junk file or something. I have everything on there for long trips or to dig through in case I want to hear something obscure but for the most part, I'm always skimming through my favorites.

I also wish I had held off for an iRiver.