Saturday, November 22, 2008

Experiences with iPod Shuffle

Usually, I've tried to stay away from technical posts in this blog of mine. But since this is also related to the iPod Shuffle I bought recently (a mention of which was made in my previous post), I thought I'll mention it here.

The iPod Shuffle was bought from J. J. Mehta, Dadar(who maintain a wonderful website, and are sellers of cameras and related equipment). The iPod Shuffle came in a nice packed / sealed case. I rushed back by train to my home quite excited. When I reached home, I plugged it into the USB to charge it. After charging it for a while, I decided to fill it up with some songs. My laptop (2 years old) came with a pre-installed version of iTunes. However, when I tried to connect the iPod to the laptop, iTunes complained that it was unable to communicate with the Shuffle (and that I must install a new version). Tried downloading iTunes from the Apple website, and realized that it was more than 60 MB. This would take at least a few hours to download from the slow internet connection at home.

WTH? I thought to hell with iTunes. Just booted my laptop into Ubuntu Linux, installed gtkPod, and loaded the Shuffle with a basic set of songs.

So that's how GNU / Linux helps us...in very small, subtle ways. Nice! And, like I mentioned earlier, my home PC hasn't seen Windows running for more than 2 years now. Everyone at home now uses Ubuntu (well Kubuntu) Linux.

2 comments:

Jayaraman said...

Welcome to IPod group. Only hitch is to copy songs, you need itunes installed in computer which is a weird thing.
I would like to buy one bose system. any suggestion and what is the price range for Home theater at lower end.

Aseem Rane said...

Nice to know that you are a kubuntu user as well. I am using Ubuntu from "Dapper Drake" days. Shifted to Kubuntu from "Feisty Fawn". No Windows since 2.5 years :)