Hi all,

I am a freshman to the ipod and have just had one bought for me by my girlfriend while we were in the states on hols. Will not get it until my birthday, which is the 7th august, but have spent time so far browsing the web sites etc. and found your one the most informative.

I have some questions that may have been asked in other forums, but cannot find them. Would appreciate some advice:

1. Can someone tell me in a quick numbered list, exactly what I have to do with my new ipod to get it working with windows (I have USB 2.0)
Bear in mind I am suffering a rare form of ipod turture as I am not allowed to open it until the 7th on my birthday and therefore cannot read the literature and am assuming I will have problems.

2. Have obviously seen all the adverse comments about MMJB. I have this already (from a previous MP3 player) and therefore have all of my CD collection on my computer ripped using MMJB at 160kbps. I have not had many problems with it in the past. However, will I be better off using ephpod? Can I use it with USB as it seems on it's website it only states for use with firewire. I do not always keep my music collection on my main hard drive and sometimes move it to a portable hard drive. Will this cause problems with synching if I only have new songs in the my music folder? Will it automatically delete the old ones from the ipod. I really want it to leave the old ones there and to add new ones.
I was in the apple store in washington and one of the assistants said that when MMJB synchs it actually wipes the hard drive and reloads all the music. Is this true?

3. Are the provided headphones really that bad as mentioned here by a number of users?

4. I live in Hong Kong and am having problems finding a good apple supplier. Anyone know anywhere I can go?

I know there are a lot of questions, but hoping you will be benevolent to an ipod virgin.

Thanks,

Paul