Jaimie Vernon wrote:

> I'm just not seeing the benefits of a system that's limited at its 
> source whether it contains 100 songs or 10,000. The inability for people 
> to move their files to another digital source from iPod without having 
> to invest in software and countless hours of aggrevation seems 
> counter-productive and well, inconvenient.

If you just load it with MP3s, there's a free plugin for Winamp which 
enables you to easily copy the files off the iPod and onto your hard 
disk.  It's extremely simple.

 > And what if the memory gets wiped by mistake? Or you lose the iPod 
itself? Bye. Bye files.

But this goes for everything, doesn't it?  What if there's a fire, and 
your CDs get melted?  If you use iTunes to administer your iPod, you can 
get it to keep a copy of everything on your hard disk, and you can back 
this up to another storage solution e.g. DVDs, HDD, tape, etc.

> I'm not against the system per se, but if you can't easily move the 
> contents around to save them elsewhere just in case of a tragedy then 
> it's rolls and bagels that you can't eat.

You can do this with no trouble at all.

I'm not an Apple apologist, by the way.  I don't like the attitude 
they've got towards proprietary formats, and software tie-ins.  But it's 
an extremely useful piece of kit - particularly when combined with an 
iTrip or a dension car adapter.