Hi everyone
I just registered, this is my first post. I thought i should put it in the general forum for windows(sorry if this is wrong...?), cos i'm not really asking for advice on anything, just felt like contributing to the forum and getting involved! Little bit about my kit:

Windows 2000 on an Acer Travelmate Laptop
PCMCIA Firewire 3-port no-name
3rd gen 20gig is slowly (slowly) winging its way to me from appleUK.

I ordered the iPod AGES ago on the 15th of Sept, it shipped from Taiwan last saturday (the 20th i think) and it has still not come!:rolleyes: Hmmm. Anyways i am not complaining (yet). These things take time, and i'd rather it came slowly than not at all! I will give it a few more days and then send them an email if it does not come.

I have been curious about the ipod right from the start when the 1st gens came out, but did not really put any real effort into research until about a month ago when i decided to look for a portable solution to my music needs. Going away to uni i wanted an mp3 player that was the bees knees, and after trawling through the internet for hours i winded up here in the lounge. The ipod was clearly what i needed, and after my birthday i had just enough cash to afford one. At first i considered eBay as an option, and i did actually go ahead and buy a 15g 3rdgen from some guy in america, but there was shipping problems and he refunded me. Then i just figured it was so much better to buy from apple.com and get all the warranty and baggins that come with it. So i did, and i have literally been losing sleep with excitement about its arrival! But of course it has not come yet.

I bought a Speck Products Skin, clear, from a guy on ebay, and he treated me v well and got the skin to me before i left for uni. I was shocked by how small it is!anyways, at the moment i just have an empty skin sittingon my desk. it seems like a great product, although of course i have no experience of using it. My hours of research led my to use cdEX to convert my (rather tiny) cd collection, and i currently have one gig of mp3s waiting quietly on my hard drive for my ipod's arrival. i use a program called tagscanner to sort my tags, and i find it incredibly easy to use once you have worked out the help file (its made by a russian guy!). Anyways, that totally rocks, and my tags are currently flawless. I also bought a pcmcia firewire (mentioned above) for my firewire needs, which installed perfectly on win 2000. it is VIA (i am pretending that i know what i am talking about) and as far as i know it should be ok to work with the ipod. we shall see! i have read a couple of horror stories about firewire with laptops on the forums. i am hoping that it will be ok. i have downloaded the apple updater for 2.0.1 but i don't know if i will need this as my ipod will be the ultra new 20gig version. i am hoping to be able to run my ipod without touching the installation cd as it seems that the cd is the cause of many woes in the ipod world. also, i have the latest version of ephpod to send my tracks to the ipod. so that should all be cool. i am thinking of working up the courage to tackle the configuration of the EAC/LAME combo, cos i think cdEX, whilst being easy to use and simple, might eventually not cater for my needs. some of my mp3s aren't perfect also, but i don't know why that is.

Well, there is my first post. It seems like there is no point to it but i just wanted to get involved with this quality forum. after putting in a serious amount of research and clocking up about two hours every night for two weeks trawling through the forums at the lounge, it's clear that the place to be is right here! so congrats for such a wicked website and forum

if anyone has any advice on anything i may have not thought about, or has any thoughts at all, please reply to this!

just a quick note about me, i'm a student at loughborough uni in the UK, 19 years old, with a reasonable (average, really) amount of technological capability... oh yeah, and i am in the middle of freshers week, and i have a constant headache. tonight will be my fourth night of clubbing, and i don't know if i can take it...:D

anyways, take care people