One Computer and 3 iPods..need help

[David M]

I have three iPods, one for my wife, one for myself and a Nano for doing workouts.

I have a few computers in the house but only one that has enough drive space to hold my music library.

So, as you have probably already guessed, iTunes has told me that I can only manage one iPod on my computer. To paraphrase the popup I get from Apple, "You can only use one iPod for managing your music. If you want to manage more than one, then we don't have any options for you, at least none that we care to mention on this popup"

So, what are my options? Is there a way to manage more than one iPod without having to resort to putting iTunes on all my computers? I don't want to have to do this because it would be a big pain in the rear and require purchasing more drives. I don't want to have to file share between drives either. I would also like to be able to put the same playlists on different iPods without having to make double or triple entries. All three iPods are registered in my name, so it's not like if Apple were to check that they would find any piracy here. Same user, same music files, different iPods...therefore no is stealing going on here. Music is licensed to the individual and not to the hardware...right? My wife and I are one legal entity...same thing applies...still no piracy.

I just tried MediaMonkey, I spent a few hours importing music and making a few playlists. I opened up MediaMonkey this morning and it had lost all my work. A screen came up that said it noticed I was here for the first time and asked me if I wanted to do a drive scan for music. It was like I had just downloaded the software and was opening it for the first time. I was horrified! What if I spend hours and hours making playlists and it does this again? It does not make we want to trust MediaMonkey. I don't think iTunes would do something that bad? Is Winamp more reliable in terms of saving your work?

Just curious, does MediaMonkey support multiple iPods? I never had the chance to give it a try.

Thanks!

[Panama Red]

I have customers with multiple ipods, David. Each user needs a separate user logon for Windows. They each set up their own ipod. I'm not sure if they can share music. You might want to check out the iPod forums for specific "How To's". Lotsa experienced folks over there.

[David M]

Thank's so much Panama.

[pam123]

There has been a post on the Apple forum about that :
http://discussions.apple.com/thread....14864&#5714864

but as things stand now you can use an unlimited number of iPods :
http://discussions.apple.com/thread....34812&#5534812

Here's how :
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300432

[David M]

My popup threats from Apple went away. Why or how I have no idea. I can now connect all three of my iPods to one computer. I can even have two iPods plugged in at the same time but not three.

I can load music from my one library into any one of my three iPods except for music that is copy protected. But there is an easy solution for that if anyone wants to buy music online that is not copy protected...buy your music from Amazon, which is not copy protected and is 10 cents less per song than the iTunes store.

Thanks for the help Panama and Pam.

[pam123]

except for music that is copy protected.

Glad you're back on track.
Any music with the iTunes copy protection should load into any of the iPods with no trouble so are those WMA protected songs ?