Hi guys (and gals)
Twice in the last six months I've had to fix a friends PC due to iTunes and Quicktime misbehaviours. They are overweight and do not remove themselves properly when uninstalling.
Both times, the applications were uninstalled but upon attempting to reinstall I either had a quicktime installation error or, once installation had finished iTunes failed to load with the good old:
'There was an error loading iTunes, sorry blah blah. Do you want to send an error report'
Well no I don't want to send a report! I just want the program to work! :ranting2:
Anyway, the first time I got the program to work by removing every entry relating to quicktime in the Windows Registry (using Registry Crawler (http://www.4developers.com/regc/) to delete multiple entries in one go).
Today though this failed and no matter what I did it just wouldn't play ball.
Reinstalling Windows was not an option in this case.
So, has anyone here had any experience of alternatives to iTunes for managing their iPod?
I notice a few on this page (http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/08/10-alternatives-to-itunes-for-managing-your-ipod/) but I have no idea what they are like. Can someone let me know what they use if they don't use iTunes?
Thanks in advance :D
This is why I wont pay over the odds for an Ipod and its terrible software.
Not much help I know, I did try songbird as a mp3 player but didn't think it was very robust.
Quote from: Zootoxin;268778This is why I wont pay over the odds for an Ipod and its terrible software.
Not much help I know, I did try songbird as a mp3 player but didn't think it was very robust.
Agreed, in my experience the software is terrible - bloated and problematic.
i would'ent touch the ipod with a 50 foot barge pole i've got a mp4 player which is good get vids on it hard though
I would agree not to have one but the problem is my customers do and the software doesn't work!
Therefore I need an alternative - I could download and try them but I'd rather get input here first :)
I think ipods are a great piece of kit, especially the Touch.
I like mine, I touch it often.
However the PC software does suck.
Quote from: Thulsa Doom;268797I think ipods are a great piece of kit, especially the Touch.
I like mine, I touch it often.
However the PC software does suck.
QFT
All I could find is http://www.ephpod.com/ , http://www.gtkpod.org/about.html , http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/home/
But the article was a bit old, you might need to look more at those pages to figure out if it works in your case.
I've never used Songbird but it seems to get mentions now and again and it's made by Mozilla so should be decent I guess. Seems Zootoxin thinks differently though, but maybe some recent updates have improved it.
I use a combination of winamp on Pc and Amarok on Linux. I think atunes and songbird have windows versions although I've never used them
atunes (http://www.atunes.org/)
songbird (http://getsongbird.com/)
winamp (http://www.winamp.com/)
I've got a couple of ipod's and an iphone and have never had a problem with itunes.
Sure, I'd rather find an alternative but it ok at what it does in my experience.
I have SharePod sat on mine so that I can use it on any computer without using iTunes and without having to install anything.
It runs from the iPod itself as a stand alone binary with a temporary library file that it creates and allows you to take music back off your iPod in a properly formatted name.
No good for podcasts or iTunes store, but for putting music on and, more importantly, taking it off again for use elsewhere, it's great and doesn't need to be installed.
Thanks guys - I'll check out Sharepod, atunes and Songbird :)
Songbird is probably the closest looking to iTunes I've found. But even though I don't have an iPod I can't shift away from iTunes. Appearence wise and for ease of use it's the best player out there. Auto-updating and cocking up it's on registry it's one of the worst. It does it pretty much constantly.
Even though I got it set to not update automatically it still does. I just wish I could bring myself to use the others. I tested songbird about 4 months back and it still wasn't quite there.
Never owned an I-pod, but I just use good old fashioned amazon for me downloadable MP3's, they are meant to under cut I-tunes and you can play them on any device and burn them onto CD with no problems :D
http://www.junodownload.com/
http://www.beatport.com
For dance music mp3s
As an alternative to Quicktime try quicktime alternative
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/quicktime_alternative.htm
Unfortunately I broke my ipod a couple years ago and after that I never went back to Apple, so I'm not 100% sure outside of reading about the features of this working with ipods:
I use MediaMonkey under Vista\XP to manage my music collection and it also supports mp3 player syncing.
http://www.mediamonkey.com/information/free/
http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/08/how-to-use-mediamonkey-to-manage-your-ipod/
For my mp3 players (Sansa E250 and E260), I wrote a perl script to handle syncing to it and keeping it up to date with the podcasts and music I want on it.
Quote from: Rabbi Bob;269044Unfortunately I broke my ipod a couple years ago and after that I never went back to Apple, so I'm not 100% sure outside of reading about the features of this working with ipods:
I use MediaMonkey under Vista\XP to manage my music collection and it also supports mp3 player syncing.
http://www.mediamonkey.com/information/free/
http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/08/how-to-use-mediamonkey-to-manage-your-ipod/
For my mp3 players (Sansa E250 and E260), I wrote a perl script to handle syncing to it and keeping it up to date with the podcasts and music I want on it.
I use Media Monkey too it is really good :) not sure if it works with Ipod of doom though
Ipods are an excellent bit of kit, I got a refurbed 80gb classic for £113 off the apple site and it didn't even have a finger print on it, where else can you get that much storage for that price?
Itunes however does suck and that why I use windows media player with dopisp (http://www.mgtek.com/dopisp/) i've always been a fan of wmp and combined with this I can upoload all my music much easier.
Check it out Jabbs and i'm sure you'll be impressed.
Quote from: King85;269058Ipods are an excellent bit of kit, I got a refurbed 80gb classic for £113 off the apple site and it didn't even have a finger print on it, where else can you get that much storage for that price?
Itunes however does suck and that why I use windows media player with dopisp (http://www.mgtek.com/dopisp/) i've always been a fan of wmp and combined with this I can upoload all my music much easier.
Check it out Jabbs and i'm sure you'll be impressed.
Why would you need that much space? they don't seem so impressive to me everyone I know has trouble with them.
I also like setting up playlists or just having a couple of albums on my player so I can give them a proper listening to.
My Player is 4gb MP4 and cost me a tenner :)
Quote from: T-Bag;268824Songbird is probably the closest looking to iTunes I've found. But even though I don't have an iPod I can't shift away from iTunes. Appearence wise and for ease of use it's the best player out there. Auto-updating and cocking up it's on registry it's one of the worst. It does it pretty much constantly.
Even though I got it set to not update automatically it still does. I just wish I could bring myself to use the others. I tested songbird about 4 months back and it still wasn't quite there.
Also considering the amount of services it adds, which are left running when you leave iTunes, or starts with windows, it is very casual wrt memory. Some of these services can be disabled easily, others you have to tweak a lot. I only use it because it has the best online shop.
I installed Sharepod for my gf - works fine.
Quote from: Zootoxin;269061Why would you need that much space? they don't seem so impressive to me everyone I know has trouble with them.
I also like setting up playlists or just having a couple of albums on my player so I can give them a proper listening to.
My Player is 4gb MP4 and cost me a tenner :)
I can watch movies on the train, etc and have all of my music avaliable to me all the time and continue to add to it without having to predict what i'll want to listen to and what I wont. If your happy with yours then that fine, different strokes for different folks.
Quote from: Jabbs;268777So, has anyone here had any experience of alternatives to iTunes for managing their iPod?
Thanks in advance :D
Just to get things back on track here :) My question was about managing the iPod not media playing in general as my customers have iPods and getting a £10 mp3 is not an alternative :sad:
Quote from: King85;269058Ipods are an excellent bit of kit, I got a refurbed 80gb classic for £113 off the apple site and it didn't even have a finger print on it, where else can you get that much storage for that price?
Itunes however does suck and that why I use windows media player with dopisp (http://www.mgtek.com/dopisp/) i've always been a fan of wmp and combined with this I can upoload all my music much easier.
Check it out Jabbs and i'm sure you'll be impressed.
It certainly looks the part will have to download the trial and see how it goes - thanks King.