couple of questions....PLEASE ANSWER!

As long as you have your music on your hard drive, no you won't lose music.

The key is to the first sync. If you connect your ipod to an empty itunes and let it autosync by by music. But if you import all the music on your hard drive (which should mirror in some way your ipod, right?) when you put in the ipod the ipod will mirror what is in itunes.

Now since you use ephpod I will assume you are use to just dragging and dropping. So I would recommend that the first time you connect you tell it you don't want to autosync and you want to manage manually.

now should you switch? Really only you can decide. I personally think that itunes makes my life managing my ipod really easy. But I autosync. If I add a song to itunes I connect my ipod and it is on my ipod. If I don't want a song anymore I delete it out of itunes (with or without sending the actual file to the trash) and when I connect it to my ipod, not on the ipod.

I think itunes is great on the mac. But it is all I know. Never used anything else. Read the website, go to info.apple.com and visit the discussion boards. Listen to people here, in the different threads and you should be able to make an informed decesion. if anything make sure all your music is ON your computers hard drive. Nothing you do should delete songs from your computers harddrive unless you tell something to send the songs to the trash or drag them there yourself, but if all your songs on on the ipod you could be in danger of having the ipod wiped if you aren't careful.

Cheers,
Stu

Well on the mac it's dragging and dropping. :-)

You should be able to back up your files. Do it however you normally do it and you should be good to go.

Stu