posted this before in another section.. thought it might be more relevant here. do give your comments..

well i have the new ipod v2(or v3 as some might say... to save on the confusion i'm just gonna call it the dockpod) and being a win98se user, knew from the start that i wouldn't be able to install apple's software.. no biggie, i thought, since i was gonna use ephpod or xplay anyway.

however, after playing around with the unit, i realised that the dockpod came out of the box as a HFS+ formatted macpod, and that the supplied software was *required* to change it to a winpod.

it wasn't really a biggie, as i had xplay installed and thus could read mac-drives once i mounted the pod. even though the current version of xplay doesn't seem to like the dockpod, i could use ephpod to sync the dockpod out of the box.

being a windoze user however, i just didn't like the fact that i had to use a mac-opener software to access my pod, and finally managed to convert it to a winpod without installing apple's software... below is what i did, although i must warn that it *could* possibly screw up your dockpod.. i was afraid of that when i tried it but hey, it worked, so here goes:

1) do a complete format of the ipod to fat32 (though the right-click popup menu in My Computer). Quick format won't work as it is in HFS.

2) after that, the pod just becomes another (very expensive) removable firewire hdd

3) inside the apple software cd, look for the iPodUpdater folder and install the ipod updater 2.0

4) run it... the updater only allows you to restore the ipod, the update option is disabled (for obvious reasons)

5) restore! voila, after it's done, you have a windoze formatted dockpod! now i can sync with ephpod directly without needing a mac-drive reader

just my 2 cents worth to other win98se dockpod users who don't have the interest (or the money) to upgrade to winxp, hope this helps.

WARNING: however, as this is the first time i've done it, and it was entirely a result of my own experimentation, i do recommend that those who are queasy about risking their dockpod just leave it as a HFS+ format pod and use macopener to read it. i'm not gonna make any promises that it'll work all the time

*just a side note though: in the "About" screen on the dockpod, the name of the pod has now become all-uppercase instead of dual case as was the case when it was HFS+ formatted.

i.e. now it reads (IPOD instead of iPod)... sighhhh

at least it now reads format: WINDOWS...