Ipod and Monitor questions

[johnpalmer]

So, my family gave me a $200 Amazon gift certificate. I figure there's two things I could buy with it.

An iPod, or a new/additional monitor.

The iPod has one feature I love: the ability to buy single songs. I have a WMA mp3 player (an old one, Creative Zen Xtra), and I've never been able to find a place where I can just buy a song for a buck.

Is there a way to rip DVD stuff to the iPod? Could I watch my Buffy DVDs on the iPod during a long ride in a bus/train/plane?

Does iTunes do something funny with your music? I heard someone say something that made me think that it would re-directory all my music, and I loathe the very concept with a great and grand passion (though I have to admit, it might not be a bad idea. But it's not *MY* idea. Yes, I can be oppositional.))

Does an iPod work like a plug in hard drive, or do you need special software to do that? (I don't care if it doesn't... but if it does, that's a huge plus in its favor.)

Does an iPod have a plug-in charger? I've heard about USB chargers, and I was desperately hoping they were "in addition to plugging it in, you can use a USB charger".

Does anyone know a good 19"+ monitor that's near enough to $200 that I won't be thinking "great, I'm using this as an excuse to go into debt, when I'm within spitting distance of being free of credit card debt?" (The spit would have to be more valuable than gold, and probably voluminous enough that I wouldn't spit so much as open my mouth to prevent loss of teeth, and I'm *really* being mean to this poor expression, aren't I?)

(Side note: was it always "voluminous", not "volumnous"? It's amazing how many words I recognize just by poor-quality brain photography and later realize I have no idea how to spell them. "Excaberate" was a particularly hard one to eliminate. Doesn't it just sound more like "Making it worse" than "exacerbate"?)

Comments

[wolfette]

the only special software you need is the latest iTunes. It really is plug and play - the iPod comes with a connection cable and plugs into your USB slot.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

You might want to try http://www.emusic.com/ as a source -- you buy a monthly subscription for a certain number of downloads, but you can get individual songs as well as whole albums.

Current rates are:

eMusic Basic
* 30 Song Downloads per month
* $9.99 per month

eMusic Plus
* 50 Song Downloads per month
* $14.99 per month

eMusic Premium
* 75 Song Downloads per month
* $19.99 per month

If you think you might be interested, please let me know -- if I send you an invitation, you get 25 free MP3s, and if you subscribe for at least one month, I get 50 free MP3s myself.

[sagittaria.livejournal.com]

Amazon has plenty of 19" monitors under $200 - for example http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FIVDIU. Sorry, I can't answer any questions about ipods, haven't joined that movement yet. :)

[grey-lady.livejournal.com]

There are freeware programs that allow you to rip the DVD to play on a video iPod, so yes, it would be possible for you to watch Buffy on the bus/train/plane. Your iPod *can* work as a plug-in hard drive - I know people who routinely use it this way - I think it's an option you choose in your iTunes software to configure that. The iPod will not come with a plug-in charger but they are readily available as add-on accessories; I got one as a Christmas present.

[caltastic]

I use some nifty software to rip DVDs for my video ipod; you can use it like an external harddrive if you select that option ('enable disk use'); it will only reorganize your files if you tell it to ('reorganize' means 'move all music to iTunes directory, then sorted by artist/album directory structure).

The separate plug-in is no longer automagically included with an ipod; it's like an extra $20. This is very very lame. You do not need a dock, don't let anyone tell you that you do.

[siliconivy.livejournal.com]

what the others said. :) you need iTunes to rip music to the iPod. iTunes rips them to an .m4a file. it does create its own iTunes directory but you can use it to convert existing .wma or .mp3 files to the iPod format, there are options for adding existing folders or files, and also for importing/exporting. i haven't played with it enough to know if you can just use existing file structure or if iTunes will always create its own directory, even if adding existing files. if that makes sense.

i only use mine for music, so don't know about DVDs.

iPod has a connection cable to charge off the laptop via the USB port. that comes standard. i think that if there is a converter to a wall-plug charger, it is something you'd have to buy separately.

only thing i have found that my laptop does *not* like being booted/rebooted with the iPod plugged in to the USB port, it locks up. Got a Dell latitude running XP; don't know if it's a quirk with this particular setup or a general thing.

sorry, know nothing about monitors.

hope that helps!

[nolly.livejournal.com]

There's a checkbox in the iTunes settings where you tell it whether or not to keep your library organized; with it checked, it copies added files into its own hierarchy; w/o, I believe it just points to where they are, but I keep it checked, so I can't say.

[merlin-t-wizard.livejournal.com]

I don't know anything about iPods, but regarding the laptop locking up when rebooting with one plugged in: if the laptop BIOS has been configured to boot from a USB device, it might be trying to boot off the iPod. If you don't normally boot the laptop from a USB drive, you can go into the BIOS and change the boot settings to not boot from a USB drive. Then the iPod shouldn't be a problem anymore.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Yup, it was always "voluminous."

But I really like "excaberate."

(I grew up with a similar-but-different problem: My reading vocabulary was a whole lot bigger than my spoken vocabulary, and I "misheard" a lot of the words I read. Which led to incidents such as my standing up in front of my fourth-grade class and proudly giving a report on the Poharas of Egypt.

I still think "Pohara" sounds much grander than "Pharoah".)

[kightp.livejournal.com]

P.S. Go for the iPod. You'll get much more pleasure from it, and your monitor isn't that bad.