switching between Mac and PC iPods - preserving the music

Originally posted by russki
Just a thought,

as my friend has been more technically tuned in and has purchased an iPod a year ago and has gone ton all the trouble of transfering his CD collection onto it, can I save myself the trouble, given that our tastes are similar, and transfer music from HIS iPod onto my laptop, and then onto MY iPod from that laptop?

the CATCH - he has a Mac, and I have a Dell PC - can MAC music files (i think they are all standard mp3s) be transfered onto a PC and then to a 3G ipod? (he has a 2G one)

(another thought, is, can i just connect MY ipod to his mac, and download the music files that way? but in that case, would i still later be able to use my PC to transfer mp3s that i ripped on that machine? can the 3G ipod deal with BOTH mac and pc formats?

thanks guys - i have been reading this forum for ages, its really good to see quite a community forming around these little toys!

d

this was exactly my situation - my brother is a mac user & i am a PC user. I bought the new ipod, sync his collection since we're about 80% overlap.

on my own PC, I installed MacOpener & EphPod to access the Ipod on a PC. Then I copied all the MP3s back onto my PC. Next I installed MusicMatch to rip my other CDs ... and copied the new MP3s over via EphPod.

only down side is that the PC version of the Updater is not able to see the Ipod - so you can't update the Ipod firmware via the PC. You need to do it via a Mac.

alternatively, once you have copied the MP3s onto your PC, you can reformat the Ipod into a windows Ipod and resync everything ... I couldn't be bother...