iPod and the ml_ipod alternative to iTunes

I know I should have written about this long ago, but anyway, here it is: I now own a stunning 8 GB third generation iPod Nano, courtesy my dear sister. Everyone knows how great the iPod is, how easy it is to use and how good the sound sounds and all that stuff, so I won’t waste precious keystrokes on that. I’ll just tell you that it is something I have started taking with me almost everywhere I go, so I always have my entire music collection with me, in a device that fits snugly in my palm. The new ‘Apple‘ of my eyes if you will. To make you more jealous, here’s a pic:

Though the iPod and its legendary user interface have become synonyms for simplicity, you can’t say the same about iTunes, the software used to transfer data to it. Within five minutes of using iTunes, I knew I would hate it for as long as I live. For one, I hated how complicated it is to do such simple things as adding songs to playlists, and for another, I was more than put out by the fact that iTunes will let you sync your iPod with only one library, and so for a guy like me who has half of his music collection in one system and the other half in another, this meant a big problem, since trying to sync with the second library would erase music which were synced with the first. So, for the next few days, I was found searching for iTunes alternatives.

Here’s a good post from Simple Help. Since MediaMonkey seemed to have been recommended by most people in different forums, I decided to try that one. Everything seemed to be working fine when I connected my iPod (the songs on my iPod were being displayed and all) and it also seemed to be transferring songs perfectly. But when I disconnected the iPod, it seemed to think there was no media inside. I finally realized that MediaMonkey didn’t have support for third generation nano yet. I tried using Winamp 5.5, which comes with a plugin called pmp_ipod bundled with it, but it didn’t show any of the songs in the device as it was supposed to, so I concluded that pmp_ipod didn’t support my iPod either.

I then read somewhere that another Winamp plugin ml_ipod has support for my third generation nano. I tried it, and it worked like a charm. The songs and the album art transfer without a hitch. And since Winamp doesn’t insist on erasing my existing collection to put in new ones, I don’t have to worry about syncing my iPod across multiple libraries. Photo transfer still seems a bit buggy, but since I use my iPod mainly for my audio collection, that doesn’t really bother me much. Winamp, like many times before, has proven to be the only player you’ll ever need, at least as far as audio playback is concerned. And in the process making at least one iPod user very happy.

Oh, and happy new year, all of you!