I’m not a big fan of online music stores. They all want total control of your system and all media related files contained in it. No thanks. Like many people, i have a large collection of MP3’s that I want to put on my iPod, no fuss, no itunes. First of all, you may need to install the iPod driver, to see whether or not you need this, plug your ipod into your pc. If you see a new drive letter with the ipod folders on it, you’re all set, you dont need anything. Next, I recommend using Anapod from RedChairSoftware. This is a management interface for your ipod thats integrated into your explorer. It is much more powerful than itunes, manages the files directly located on the ipod, not on your pc. You dont have to worry about what songs are “synced” or not. This software also has increased playlist creation capabilities that you simply wont get on iTunes. Leave your MP3’s on that 300GB drive, sorted by name, and tagged how you like, Anapod doesn’t care! Drag them onto the anapod icon and bam, they fly onto the device.

Now that we have our MP3 collection onthe ipod, what happens when we buy another CD? We use Easy CD DA Extractor from Poikosoft to rip the audio to our computer, all tagged and ready to go. This has been the benchmark that other ripping software has been measured up against. I’ve been using it for many revisions, and it works flawlessly.

If you have messed up tags, and I’m sure you do, or if you want to update tags or add album art for those color iPods, check out Tag and Rename. It’s perfect for doing all things tag related. Check out their software over at Softpointer.com.

After writing all these, I didn’t realize how much work I actually put into saving, organizing and playing my personal audio files. I plan on trying itunes, just so I can make a direct comparison. Maybe I was wrong? I guess we’ll find out…