It's time myself and the wife entered the new age, please answer in laymans terms…

All we want to do is put all our CD's (well most of them and the odd fav song) onto an Ipod and use it in a docker in the house…..

excuse the ignorance…

The scenario buy a virtually brand new Ipod 'Touch' 16Gb off a bloke in work OR just buy a new Ipod?

1 – I know the touch has all the fancy apps on it, I dont commute or use it in the car so are there actually any helpful apps? what i'm trying to say is there any actual advantage on having the touch over the standard?

2 – I assume…. i have to install ITunes on the house laptop and then pop in CD after CD copy them all into ITunes then it mystically pops them onto the IPod?

3 – I have been told NOT to buy the IPod 'Shuffle' as it just mixes up all the songs and you cant actually build playlists or play a whole album?

4 – Carrying on from nos 4 on the Ipod for example can you set up different playlists, 'acoustic' (all mellow stuff chilling on a sunday) – 'mental'(just got home from work – cooking the tea tunes) etc etc? We have loads of parties so we'd be into this bit, making up playlists etc

5 – What is the sound like on Ipod Dockers (i know its proabably not up there with a tidy CD hi-fi), I guess there are cheap and nasty and silly expensive but is there any value in getting a tidy Ipod compatible amp (if such a thing exists) as i want in the future to link up the PS3 and Flat screen to a surround sound system so mayaswell buy and all in one?

i'll get my coat…….

cheers

[*]1. I'd only go for another ipod if size and weight was a concern OR if you couldnt fit all your music onto the 16gb. My music collection is just over 16gb and its pretty annyoing not to have all the music there wih you. Apart from that, the ipod touch is better imo. Tv guide, Facebook, emails and internet are all really good. on the device and games can be a fun time waster whilst listening to music. I must say that the ipod nano and classic do have really good interfaces though, and also really, really easy to use for music playing.

2. Yup. its so simple to use.

3. you can put a playlsit on the shuffle and it will play it in the order that you organised in. or you can have it on random. I'd only bother get a shuffle for running.

4. you can set up the playlist on itunes really wasily. slightly less well done on the ipod but you can make on the go playlists fairly easily

5. No idea, but as long as you rip your music to a pretty code codec then all should be well.

No idea but whatever you do, don't do a google search for the children's version of the Apple Ipod touch, the "I touch kids" 😀

ROFLMAO @ Cool-hand-luke that's a good 'un.

Sound from the docking stations varies with price. The BOSE (£300) is good but the Argos special at £10 is poor. As with everything, the benefits of paying more are not linear and there are some really good value systems out there for about £90

When you sync the guy at work's iPod with your computer all the apps will disappear anyway so don't worry about that. The touch is brilliant, but does not have the capacity of the 'classic' iPod.

The touch has the advantages of long battery life (no spinning hard drive); brilliant interface for sighted people; games; internet apps (facebook, flixster, weather, all those things that it's too much faff to open the laptop to find out – TV listings); thin. Do not buy the guy from work's 1st generation touch. The 1st gen is good, but the newer ones are much better. Do not get a touch <16GB in capacity.

you have to use iTunes, but it is good. Be sure to set it to 'rip' the content of your CDs to a good quality file type otherwise you'll miss lots of music.
you can create playlists of just what you want – just like the old days of home taping but a lot easier. You can also get the machine (PC or iPod) to play 'kinds' of things based on selection criteria you set e.g. genre=jazz or contains 'smith' would get you a weird mix of the smiths, patti smith and esbejorn svensson depending on the content of your library.

You can pay people to rip the CDs for you. Or do it yourself as you say.

When you connect the iPod iTunes will ask whether you want to sync and it will erase the existing content and sync with your computer. From that point on it will sync changes automatically or adjustments you demand.
Shuffle does just what you say. Go for touch, nano or classic.

iPod dockers are an expensive version of the generic iPod chinos 😉 In real life if you are an amp & speakers person then go that way. The B&W zeppelin is funny looking and very nice sounding. The Bose docks are OK. The old Apple HiFi was OK. iLounge has lots of reviews of this sort of thing.

If you have a PS3 you can use that to play CDs and music files streamed from your PC using various media server programs. And no need for an iPod.

All you need to connect your iPod to speakers is a 3.5mm stereo jack to phono adapter. You can add an iPod dock and charger to make it prettier and keep the iPod charged.

Enjoy. But be quick because in a few weeks you'll want to discuss vinyl and valves.

One word of advice – make sure you're connected to the internet when you copy CD's over. It should just bring up all the song names/info automatically and save a whole load of typing. Also, then it normally assigns a 'Genre' to each song, and that makes playlist compiling a lot easier as you can simply select all the songs in the 'Acoustic' genre or whatever.

The touch is really a PDA in disguise*. How much music do you have? Get a device that takes all of it with some headroom. Only then think about added value. E.g. I have 16G of music so got a 32G touch and then filled it with apps and films. It's great fun as a PDA and mobile entertainer. Is 16G big enough for you?

*it has no GPS chip so cant be used for in car nav without an addon.