Do you own an Apple iPod? I do own my 4th iPod now and just purchased another one and did an upgrade of Apple iTunes to version. What then happened is a very disappointing experience as there is a bug that Apple Inc. has not fixed in over 12 months at the time of this writing.


Another iPod died on me after giving me company while running for a long time. Sweat, rain, heat, shocks - I guess it was too much for the poor little iPod Shuffle. This time I decided to get an iPod Nano instead of a Shuffle. The iPod Shuffle is great in regards to weight and sturdiness, however it is limited in regards to playlists and functionality. The iPod Nano just a notch more heavy in weight compared to the Shuffle and little bigger in overall size, but twice as thin as the Shuffle.



After purchasing the Nano at the local Apple Store I had to install iTunes on my laptop to put my music on this new device. I did not have to use iTunes to program my Shuffle due as I was using a little application (downloadable from SourceForge) that allowed to re-program the database every time when adding or removing songs from the Apple iPod Shuffle (copy and paste). However, this application does not work with the Nano and so I installed iTunes 8 - not knowing what kind of disaster would turn out to be. I started iTunes and let it index my database which took forever, but when I finally had it all in place I hooked up the new Nano iPod.



I started creating playlists and sort my music library, but iTunes was extremely slow. I figured it might still be indexing songs and stuff in the background, but it did not get better. So, I started a Google Search for the slowness with iTunes and apparently this started in summer of 2008 when Apple updated iTunes to version 8. I was shocked to read that now, exact one year later the same problem still persist for users of iTunes 8 on a Windows based computer. Some Apple Computer users reported the same problem, but they were in the minority. All the people who reported this problem were using Windows XP or Windows Vista - just like myself. iTunes acted extremely slow and rendered the device useless in many cases.



More research however showed that 3rd party software allows to bypass the problem and still get the same functionality out of the iPod. I tried a few tools and found that an application called "Songbird" combined with the iPod plug-in is the best way to manage playlists and songs on an iPod. Now I really love my new iPod Nano due to the fact that I do not have to use the bloat ware that Apple iTunes has become.



Conclusion: If you are considering the purchase of an Apple iPod and want to use iTunes 8 on your Windows OS based computer to load music to the device you might join the ranks of many frustrated users who are experiencing this very problem. Apple has not provided a solution since September 2008 from what I can tell which is not a good way to promote products.



About the Author
Chris Puetz writes many product reviews about consumer technology related products or gagdets. Read more reviews about Solar Atomic Watches or the Downtown Denver Hotels for comparison

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