[Cybrid]

Well, this is a novella of a post but it is entertaining nonetheless...

For my anniversary, I decided to buy my wife an iPod Touch. This, as most who I have flamed and shamed, will know is probably the last thing I would ever buy for myself. I did this since my wife isn't very technically inclined and while would love to have a "tricked out" Pocket PC, doesn't have the slightest desire in learning how to do that.

In previous years, to answer "Honey, is there a way to have all my phone #'s and appt's in one place so that it is easy to find?" . I went out and purchased an HP 1950 since the older Dell X5 I had laying around was "ugly" and biig. It also had the bonus of WM5 which meant charging nightly wouldn't be a concern. Soft resets are, however, a new way of life with that little beast.

She didn't like carrying that around and so it sits on the night table. She does use it to surf over wifi occasionally and finds PIE horrible. Opera mini to the rescue.
When she needs a phone #, she'll look it up.....or get me to when she's not home and I am.

She has a tiny nano sized mp3 player she uses when working out but that doesn't hold enough songs and she really doesn't want to know how to sync that either.

So yesterday, I decided that I'll purchase a iPod Touch. This would somehow fulfill the promise that WinCe didn't deliver on since 1998-99. From the glowing rose colored reports, this should do everything but cook dinner...
and now for the story....

I bring this home and knowing my wife's tendencies, begin setting it up for her. I secretly begin ripping all her CD's and even plan to digitize her old audio tapes of old Hindi songs that now would be near impossible to collect.
I download iTunes (70-80mb) and Quicktime (?) over my cable lite connection and then half an hour later begin to set this up. The PC is a homebrew AMD sempron 3000+ with 1 GB RAM and XP PRO.

I purchase and download the 221Mb update to 2.0, and begin updating. This progresses slower than any ROM update I have ever been witness to.

So 4 hours later from my $420 investment, I am now ready to begin setting this up.

I specify all the folders, network shares, etc where all my media is stored and wait...and wait...
This is slow. This initial sync is about 3-4 Gb. With time on my hands I'm even considering buying Quicktime Pro, so that I could convert my Digital Camcorder videos to play. She'd get a real thrill out of that.

So....it begins optimizing the 2354 photos, I have shared on the network folder...

Hours later...

Many hours later...

I get the "The ipod "...iPod" could not be synced. An unknown error occurred (-50)"

Several tries of syncing,

Several tries of "Hold power+Home" for 10 seconds to power off the iPod A.K.A soft reset

calling it a day and getting a bright and early start on it this morning

and now a "Restore" A.K.A. hard reset

setting up a new partnership and...

I get the "The ipod "...iPod" could not be synced. An unknown error occurred (-50)"

So while I, a technically inclined geek try to sort out this mess before the 2nd of Sept. (My anniversary), I leave you all to make your own observations and conclusions.

My own will follow in a reply.

[Cybrid]

Well, this is a novella of a post but it is entertaining nonetheless...

For my anniversary, I decided to buy my wife an iPod Touch. This, as most who I have flamed and shamed, will know is probably the last thing I would ever buy for myself. I did this since my wife isn't very technically inclined and while would love to have a "tricked out" Pocket PC, doesn't have the slightest desire in learning how to do that.

In previous years, to answer "Honey, is there a way to have all my phone #'s and appt's in one place so that it is easy to find?" . I went out and purchased an HP 1950 since the older Dell X5 I had laying around was "ugly" and biig. It also had the bonus of WM5 which meant charging nightly wouldn't be a concern. Soft resets are, however, a new way of life with that little beast.

She didn't like carrying that around and so it sits on the night table. She does use it to surf over wifi occasionally and finds PIE horrible. Opera mini to the rescue.
When she needs a phone #, she'll look it up.....or get me to when she's not home and I am.

She has a tiny nano sized mp3 player she uses when working out but that doesn't hold enough songs and she really doesn't want to know how to sync that either.

So yesterday, I decided that I'll purchase a iPod Touch. This would somehow fulfill the promise that WinCe didn't deliver on since 1998-99. From the glowing rose colored reports, this should do everything but cook dinner...
and now for the story....

I bring this home and knowing my wife's tendencies, begin setting it up for her. I secretly begin ripping all her CD's and even plan to digitize her old audio tapes of old Hindi songs that now would be near impossible to collect.
I download iTunes (70-80mb) and Quicktime (?) over my cable lite connection and then half an hour later begin to set this up. The PC is a homebrew AMD sempron 3000+ with 1 GB RAM and XP PRO.

I purchase and download the 221Mb update to 2.0, and begin updating. This progresses slower than any ROM update I have ever been witness to.

So 4 hours later from my $420 investment, I am now ready to begin setting this up.

I specify all the folders, network shares, etc where all my media is stored and wait...and wait...
This is slow. This initial sync is about 3-4 Gb. With time on my hands I'm even considering buying Quicktime Pro, so that I could convert my Digital Camcorder videos to play. She'd get a real thrill out of that.

So....it begins optimizing the 2354 photos, I have shared on the network folder...

Hours later...

Many hours later...

I get the "The ipod "...iPod" could not be synced. An unknown error occurred (-50)"

Several tries of syncing,

Several tries of "Hold power+Home" for 10 seconds to power off the iPod A.K.A soft reset

calling it a day and getting a bright and early start on it this morning

and now a "Restore" A.K.A. hard reset

setting up a new partnership and...

I get the "The ipod "...iPod" could not be synced. An unknown error occurred (-50)"

So while I, a technically inclined geek try to sort out this mess before the 2nd of Sept. (My anniversary), I leave you all to make your own observations and conclusions.

My own will follow in a reply.

[txa1265]

So you are failing to manage what millions of millions of non-technical people have done and are looking for us all to nod our heads and join you on an anti-Apple crusade?

I have no idea what you have done wrong, but I do know that my wife has had no problem setting these things up and she has neither the technophile background nor tinkering nature I do.

What I see in her is the lack of patience - she doesn't want to update everything, store everything, and wait all sorts of hours. She will do a bit at a time and deal with it later.

That said, I have not been completely thrilled by the 2.0 update - and agree that the ROM update was very slow. My battery life has also suffered more than can be explained by the new games.

But I would recommend simplicity - sync some songs, some photos, and incrementally add until you succeed.

[Cybrid]

Originally Posted by txa1265

So you are failing to manage what millions of millions of non-technical people have done and are looking for us all to nod our heads and join you on an anti-Apple crusade?

Naw, crusades are for fanatics. As I said I leave you to draw you own conclusions.

Two more restores later I am on my Vista machine. lets see how that goes and it is incremental...I've got several more gigs to go. Not to mention audio tapes to re-record through a 2.5mm to 2.5mm line.

What I see is the bias. The "Windows Mobile needs soft resetting and hard resetting all the time plus syncing is a chore...." while Apple is all sunshine and rainbows.

In this instance however that just isn't so is it? I mean, I could get my 8Gb micro sd card and just drag and drop all the music and video and photos into it...
Set media player to update the library and be done with it.

Without a file system I am forced to wait for itunes on the new PC to RE-optimize 2354 .jpgs, re-convert 1.2 Gbs of music on a diferent PC for syncing. YAAAAAY!

Oh and while waiting for iTunes to re-download... i reset the device from within the settings.... While this was probably re-formatting all 32Gb..This apparently takes 4 hours. Incredible.

Since I have done a full factory default restore and am on a new PC. There`s little chance of hardware conflict or database corruption continuing to skew my perspective.

Lets see how it goes now...

[Cybrid]

it chokes on the photos..
It seems syncing anything over a 100 pics is stressful.
Oh and error code (-69) this time

[onlydarksets]

Originally Posted by Cybrid

In this instance however that just isn't so is it? I mean, I could get my 8Gb micro sd card and just drag and drop all the music and video and photos into it...
Set media player to update the library and be done with it.

Assuming no DRM, of course.

As for music - it shouldn't be converting it if it's MP3 or AAC. If your library is WMA, then you can't really blame the iPod for having to reconvert. You'd have to do the same if your library was OGG and you wanted to put it on a WM device.

Photos I've heard nothing good about with the iPods. Can you resize them to 480x320 outside of iTunes?

[txa1265]

Originally Posted by onlydarksets

Photos I've heard nothing good about with the iPods. Can you resize them to 480x320 outside of iTunes?

I think it *still* screws with them, but it would take less time ... for my wife this is great, she just puts about a hundred photos on there, then adds and subtracts as she goes.

[Cybrid]

Originally Posted by onlydarksets

Photos I've heard nothing good about with the iPods. Can you resize them to 480x320 outside of iTunes?

I discovered folders in iTunes which contained *.iThmbs which I guess is their version of DRM photos?

Error code (-69) resolved when I stopped pulling from the shared network folder.

Between 261 and 323 is a limit of how many photos it'll spoon feed. Error code (-50)

DRM? Is that some kind of 8-Track or audiotape?
I bought one song for my son. Exactly once 3 years ago on iTunes. That's the end of DRM.
I even stopped buying Sony CD's after the rook kit fiasco

And yes, I can blame them for having to convert my media. For two reasons.

• I don't need song1.wma AND song1.AAC simultaneously. Even if I do have 600Gb.
• IT should just play! I guess having robust clients like VLC and Core/TCPMP Player have spoiled me. My brother said it best. " I'm not spending 6 hours to watch a 2 hr Movie."

1,776 photos synced. 4 Gb Music synced. Contacts synced. Her 6, count em, 6! bookmarks manually entered.

Is there a way to actually sync IE bookmarks to the Touch?

My Son's "What I did this summer" essay will read....
I got my Dad's old computer.
My Mom got an iPod Touch.
I helped my Dad digitize a whole bunch of stuff. We put all my Mom's old cassette tapes, movies, home movies, favorite "Three's company" episodes on Dad's new PC and then on Mom's Touch. And Yeah!....

Edited to clear up typos.

[Cybrid]

Some interesting points made here

I'm finding the one iTunes per device rule is a serious pain.
To encode for this massive undertaking I'm using my two Son's and their PC's to build the library.
The Main PC (mine) with my Wife's account is set to sync with the Touch. Anything created on the other PC's must be moved here for successful syncing.
I can't even use my administrative account on the same PC while it is connected. since it will delete itself.



Example, you went on vacation...and met some relatives, friends and stayed at their house, you decide to snag some old photos from them..iTunes will promptly come up with a "this iPod synced to another account..." error message and the proceed to delete all your music.

So in an instance like this were I to visit my Uncles and Aunts in the "Old Country"
I'd need a laptop or a separate USB drive. I may have 22Gb free on the Touch but that is useless to me since I must use iTunes to move data in and out.

[Cybrid]

Format Factory is a remarkable free app.
It can decode DVD's very nearly directly into your desired format and settings.
I can convert a DVD to iPhone settings MP4 with only a few clicks.

[Cybrid]

My iTunes is reading

• 2.72 Gb Audio
• 4.21 Gb Video
• 917 Mb Photos
• 3.38 Gb Other
• 18.58 Free space

118.x Mb was the updated OS, say you multiply that by two since I've updated it again to v2.0.1... though that shouldn't be...
I'm willing to forgive another 0.5 Mb for PIM but that still leaves 2.5Gb unaccounted for... Are the 8 apps I've installed really that huge?
God help me but I thought people complained about Microsoft's BLOAT.