Gadget Gripes

Yesterday gadget lust...today gadget grumbles. I do love the iPod...it's the iTunes Software that gives me fits!

Back in February, I finally got my new laptop. The old one was just past six years old and counting. I was holding my breath for the last six months there...I even ponied up the $55/yr for Carbonite the online backup service. I had too much irreplaceable stuff on the Hard Drive to lose.

The new Dell laptop is a wonder, as is the Windows 7 operating system. This machine is so fast, so powerful, it's almost impossible to slow it down.

It was just a coincidence that Apple released their latest iTunes Update just as I finished unboxing the Dell. After I downloaded the new printer drivers, I downloaded and installed Apple's latest and greatest...

...and that's when my grumbles began. I won't go into the long blow-by-blow. Bottom line? iTunes 9.0.3 crashed my iPod Touch, period. I couldn't download to iTunes either. I couldn't synch the iPod to my computer...I couldn't do anything, except search for a work-around. Unfortunately, I then installed the thing on my old laptop with the same outcome! Fortunately, I could keep the Touch in service by manually downloading my podcasts every night via my WiFi Network, when I got up to get ready for work. So, instead of having iTunes handle all my content gathering automatically, I would spend a half an hour or so every evening getting enough podcasts together to listen to at work later that night.

I look at the iPod exactly the same way I look at all the tools I employ. If a tool does the job, and helps me do my job, I'm on it. A tool that makes work for me? Nope, I've got a job...I'm not spending any of my hard-earned cash to buy another job!

Back to my story...I dutifully performed the podcatching task every evening all the way to the end of the season. Once I was "at liberty", I went to war with my body clock to reset it to the "daytime awake/nightime asleep" setting. Once I won the reset war, I focused once again on ironing out the iTunes problem, and some other tech dilemmas...some from the move to the new laptop, some with other new high tech gadgets.

Now at leisure, I was free to do my research into my troubles. I spent a few days looking through Apple's Support Forums, where users with iTunes troubles help each other online. I found a website posted to the Apple Support Forums that offers older versions of iTunes for free download. (iTunes from Apple is free) Thanks to a How-To posted on the forum, I was able to uninstall all the myriad Apple programs that loaded in the background when I installed iTunes, download and install the older version, and finally, synch the iPod to my old laptop. All in all it's 8 hours of my life that I'd like back! I even blogged about it!

I've got the old iTunes working on my old laptop...I'm waiting 'till the bugs are eradicated from iTunes 10 before I install it on the new machine.

I will start getting my 8 hours back once ski season begins again...I'm thinking I'll be banking 25-35 minutes every worknight. I should be even by the end of this coming season.

OK...there's a couple of new software products from Apple that I'm coveting today...When Apple released the new iPhone4, they also debuted the latest operating system software, iOS4 for download. iOS4 will run on my Gen3 iPod Touch. I'm hot to get the newest iTunes software running on my new laptop, as well.

So, having learned my lesson back in February, I went straight to Apple's Support Forums when iOS4 came out, so I could avoid making more work for myself.

Sure enough, the new OS was giving upgraders fits worse than the iTunes 9.0.3 debacle that ensnared me in February! It's three months since the release of iOS4, and I'm still on the fence, though there's hope. Wednesday, Apple updated to iOS4.1, and it looks like most of the bugs have been addressed...I've moved on to the new iTunes 10 circus...There's still trouble in Paradise apparently...I'll give it a look after Daylight Savings Time ends this fall.

By then, the torches and pitchforks should be back in the shed, and the natives will be rested up...not restless. I'm guessing that by then, iTunes 10.1 will be available. 10.1 could be the solution I'm dreaming of...