As some of you may know, unless you have iTunes installed you can’t use an iPod whilst it’s plugged in to a computer. As it charges through the USB connection, effectively this means you can’t listen to an iPod while it’s charging up. This is annoying!
I did think about installing iTunes, but to be honest I’m not really a fan of it: it seems like quite a bloated piece of software, to be honest! If I was on Linux [this is my work laptop – Windows, unfortunately], I’d have a few options available to me, but unfortunately most of them do not have a Windows version. Anyway, I finally decided to install WinAmp, which (back in the days when I used Windows) wsa my absolute favourite media player — I used it for years! (I’m still annoyed they don’t have a version out for Linux — XMMS, which I use, is a clone of classic Winamp but they don’t seem to have a version of the new one out. Ah well).
After using it briefly, I then decided to replace WinAmp’s standard iPod support with ml_ipod because it’s open source, and seems to have more features
Aaaanyway. It works pretty well, I can listen to tunes while my iPod is plugged in etc etc. The problem is… it has an option to synchronise the iPod with your local media library. Which is great… I tried it. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise the synchronisation took place FROM my local media library TO my iPod. In other words: When I hit sync, it had managed to delete about 300 songs before I realised and hit Abort!
So what’s the moral of this long, rambling, and rather boring story? Don’t hit ‘Sync’ on WinAmp if you haven’t imported the iPod’s library into your local Media Library!
Note: This was entirely my own fault, it threw up a confirmation box which I didn’t read properly… doh!
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