Joining the iPod Generation

May 9, 2005 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Music, Web/Tech 

I’ve decided to join the iPod generation.

I’m a Systems Analyst.  I do project planning, requirements definition, design, programming, testing – the whole gamut of the system project lifecycle.  That means a lot of time spent sitting at my desk typing.  I work in cubicle-land, and until lately my cubicle neighborhood has been pretty sparse.  However, it’s getting more crowded lately – and therefore noisier.

I’ve burned an MP3 CD and listened to it on my PC at work, but I get tired of the number of songs that fit on one CD.  I also listen to Internet radio, but I assume that someday the network folks are gonna catch on and ask me to stop.  Therefore, what I need is a way to carry my CD collection around with me.

Sounds like an iPod to me.

I ordered an iPod Photo 30GB from buy.com last Tuesday.  I’m a little annoyed at them for slow shipping – they claimed to have shipped it the same day on Tuesday, but Fedex’s system shows that they didn’t get the trailer until Thursday.  It’s really a one-day delivery to me, but it’s not here yet.  Should arrive this afternoon.  buy.com claims “3 to 5 day delivery” for this item, so they didn’t make it.

In order to get ready, I downloaded iTunes from Apple and installed it on my home PC.  I then started what I thought was the CD burning process.  It was taking just a few seconds per CD, and I went through a small pile in an hour.

That’s when I realized that I wasn’t getting anything in iTunes from the CD’s.

As it turns out (after an hour of digging on the Internet), my old Dell (purchased 1/2000) needed an ATA driver update in order to play/rip CDs with iTunes.  After installing that, it worked fine.

I have two drives – DVD/CD reader, and a CD burner.  I got about 7-8x speed on my ripping 192 bitrate MP3’s.  That translates to about 10 minutes per CD, or 6 an hour.  It’s gonna take me quite a while to get all of my 100+ CD’s (probably more like 150) ripped.

I’ll post more as I get a chance to play with it and use it.  I expect to be buying some accessories as well – probably an AC charger for work and a car charger plus a cassette adapter for the car.

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