A Traveling Music System…

For those of us who spend our winters living in confined spaces, we have to be discriminating when we decide what to bring south and what to leave behind. If you are a music lover with a large CD collection, you probably agonize over which albums to bring and where to store them. What if there was a way to bring your entire music collection with you?

Last week I wrote about listening to radio broadcasts on the computer or on an iPod. While an iPod is capable of playing audio, video and displaying still photos, when it was first introduced by Apple it was just a music player. The iPod is not the only pint-sized music player (know as MP3 players) on the market, but it is the most popular, with over 100,000,000 units sold world-wide since its inception in 2001.

The feature that makes the iPod so attractive is its ability to store many hours of music in a small, easy to use, attractive device. With the capability of storing thousands of songs, the iPod makes traveling with a large music library possible, and is an excellent choice for anyone who spends their winter months in confined spaces.

iPods come in four different physical sizes. The smallest, the iPod Shuffle, is the size of a matchbook and holds up to 240 songs. The iPod Nano is the size of a credit card and comes in two models—one with 4GB of memory which can store up to 1,000 songs, and a 8GB model which can store up to 2,000 songs. The two larger iPod models, the iPod Classic and iPod Touch are approximately the size of a pack of playing cards. The Classic comes in with 80GB of memory, which can store up to 20,000 songs, and 160GB of memory that can store up to 40,000 songs. The iPod Touch, which is also a Wifi device capable of connecting to the internet, comes with 8GB (1,750 songs), 16GB (3,500 songs), or 32GB (7,000 songs) of memory. The street price of iPods range from approximately $60 for an iPod Shuffle to $330 for a 160GB iPod Classic. Because of its internet capability, the iPod Touch is more expensive with a top price of about $500. For more information on all the iPod models, visit www.apple.com/itunes/whichipod.

Once an iPod has been selected and purchased, the process of adding music is accomplished with a computer (PC or Mac) running iTunes software. All Macintosh computers come with iTunes installed, and a version for Windows XP and Vista can be downloaded for free from the Apple website.

The first step is uploading the music from your CDs to the computer. Once the songs are uploaded the iPod is connected to the computer with a USB cable and the music is transferred via iTunes. In addition, if you have access to a broadband internet connection, iTunes can download music from the iTunes Store. The store has an almost limitless selection of songs which can be purchased for only $.99. Two clicks of the mouse and you can be listening to old blue eyes sing “New York, New York.”

The initial setup of an iPod can be time consuming, but once completed you have access to an entire library of music whenever you want. Excellent tutorials are available at Apple's The New Users Guide to iPod web page and About.com: iPod.

While designed for listening to music through earphones, a number of third-party companies market dedicated iPod speaker systems with prices ranging from $100 to $200. With one of these speaker systems, a tiny iPod can be transformed into a state-of-the-art stereo system that fills the rooms of your home away from home with music. For reviews of select speaker systems visit Cnet Reviews.

At next Monday’s Computer Club I will be making a presentation on using Powerpoint. If you are interesting in learning how to creating a computer slide show with Powerpoint, you might find the presentation interesting. And if you get a chance, visit my Photo Blog at lsqlensviews.blogspot.com.