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Will this holiday season bring more iPods into your house? How do you deal with more than one iPod when you only have one computer? That's the burning issue around my place this year and is the question that propelled me into this whole series I've been doing about the iPod.
When I began looking into it, I found it wasn't as scary as it seemed. There are basically two ways to do it, either of which apply equally to Windows or Mac computers.
The easiest is to simply set up iTunes with separate playlists. (See Understanding iTunes and iPod for information about playlists.) Create a playlist for each iPod or each person who will be synching an iPod with your one installation of iTunes.
For each iPod, set up iTunes to sync only the playlists you want on that iPod.
The image shows selecting the Music playists to sync. Be sure to run through all the tabs (Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, etc) across the top to specify which of those to sync with each individual iPod as well. Under the Summary tab, you may need to check the option to Sync only checked songs and videos and the option to Manually manage music and videos.
When you plug an iPod into the computer, the computer recognizes which iPod it is, and you're on your way to synchronization.
What if the easy way won't work for you? Perhaps you have accounts set up on your computer especially for your children that restrict what they can do on the computer. If you want your children to be able to sync their own iPods while signed in to their own user account on the computer, that's possible. Each user can have an individual Library in iTunes with this method.
If the child's user account does not currently give them access to the iTunes application, sign in to your computer as admin. Edit the child's user account. Grant access to the iTunes program in the Programs or Applications folder of your computer. Then sign into your child's account and open iTunes. You will still want to set up which playlists from iTunes will be synched to the chlld's iPod in the same way it was described previously.
Other Articles in the iPod Series
- Accessorize your iPod (or iPhone)
- Planning Ahead for Christmas: Which iPod is Right for You?
- Understanding iTunes and iPod
- Take Your iPod Along for the Ride
Related Links:
- Confessions of a Middle Aged Dancing Queen, or How Itunes Enriches My Life
- Money-saving Holiday Gift Ideas
- Day Twenty-One - Hound Dog Blog
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Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words
