Ok so maybe I'm an anachrophile and for quite a few years I resisted Apple's iPpod and was very happy with my Creative Zen Touch or some-such. Only problem was it wouldn't charge through its USB. I was visiting a friend on exchange in Washington (DC) a few months ago and decided to take the opportunity to bring home an iPod without the EU headphone volume limiter.

First dissapointment I had to use iTunes and it wouldn't import my existing rips. Next, compared to the creative software iTunes was useless at finding album art work. In simple terms everything I ripped to my Zen had artwork (despite no use for the information as it didn't display artwork) and yet a third to a half of my rips using iTunes couldn't find cover artwork.

However, it was more usable as it could live in my car and keep charged through a USB adaptor and so it slowly filled up.

Today I allowed iTunes to install the latest version, it had been insisting for the last few weeks. Once it had rebooted my computer it needed me to input my password for the first time since this adventure began and I got it wrong, can you remember a 7 month old password? I could but I forgot it had to have an upper case letter, lower case letter and a number. Ok reset my password, after quite a few tries due to the above... starting to get a bit cross now.... [censored] Why does MY password to MY stuff have to comply with Apples OTT settings?

Plug in iPod and it wants to update the OS. Ok can it get any worse? Well yes it wants to wipe the iPod drive to install the new OS. Then guess what? It cannot re-install all my 'tunes as there is slightly more than the iPod holds on my hard-drive. Why can't it just do its best or even offer to compress the rips to get them to fit?

So my iPod is now blank. Bloody Apple........ I'm sure there is an answer to this but I do have a life as well.

Main system; 861v8 ID41, DSP8000SEU fronts with DSP5500 centre and DSP7000 rears (all in lovely silver) 504, HD621
Second system 861v4 ID40 LPS, G98DH, 504, HD621, 2x DSP5200 with DSP5200 centre
MD600 tucked away in study. Lots of other Meridian!