Technical Question re; ITunes

Nazman

Nazman

Bench
Here's a question for all your tech types out there that wanna help me save a few dollars.

My son has a laptop (XP) and i have a desktop (Vista). We both have ITunes loaded on our respective computers and download music on a fairly regular occasion.

He downloaded the entire new release from Radiohead which i really like. Shouldn't i be able to transfer those tracks from my sons lap top to my computer. We're both on a router but not sure how to network our two computers so that we can transfer files to each other's ITunes library.

Any thoughts?
 
This could cause you a lot of gas. The difficult solution is figuring out the software that controls your network if you have such. It is not possible to answer without knowing what software you have. It looks like you are not networked which makes my solution even better and easier.

The easiest solution is to buy a USB flash card (use Google to find one - very inexpensive) which allows you to plug in the card into a USB port so XP or Vista will recognize it as an extra hard drive. Then copy the music to the card. Then unplug the card and put it into a USB port of the other computer and transfer the music from the card to the computer.

You need to know which folders will contain the music.

This is a perfectly adequate and simple solution especially if you have rare need to access each other's computer.
 
OK, I got an iPod for Christmas and still haven't used it that much or tried something like this but....

If iTunes is loaded on both, can't you just copy the songs onto an iPod and then copy them off onto the computer that doesn't have them?

Wouldn't that be easiest?
 
Warhawk said:
OK, I got an iPod for Christmas and still haven't used it that much or tried something like this but....

If iTunes is loaded on both, can't you just copy the songs onto an iPod and then copy them off onto the computer that doesn't have them?

Wouldn't that be easiest?
Click to expand...

I don't own an iPod but this sure makes sense.
 
Thanks, Glenn. That idea doesn't sound so much different than my son's who suggests that i get him some Nero software so he can make a CD of the music off his computer and then i could download it to mine. Same idea, essentially, right?

But i could swear that there was a point in time before my computer, the desk top, went down and i upgraded to Vista that our computers were actually hooked up and we could transfer files back and forth...

In fact my son swears to it. That he could listen to music from the files i had on my computer. But again, from a distance, as you said, and not knowing my existing programs and software, it makes it nearly impossible to trouble shoot.

Appreciate your effort to help but realize that some things remain mysteries for my limited abilities. I just don't get the satisfaction of having things always go the way i expect them to go just because something used to be a certain way.

Especially when it comes to computers...
 
There was a time just recently when I could use my wife's printer and access her computer and now I can't after upgrading my router. Until I have a real need to figure out how to get things back to being real slick, I'll just avoid the aggravation.

My wife and I have a flashcard and if I need to print something, I just plug the flash card into her computer and print straight off it.

Sometime the real techie things are the coolest but can take half a lifetime to figure out. :(

I'm sure you once could do all this so it just may be a matter of finding the software that assists the sharing. I use Network Magic. Maybe that will help jog your memory.

As to the CD: this might not make sense but you need to transfer the music files as data files. You probably need to use a CD called a CD-RW and not a CD-R. This means you don't make a CD that will play in a normal CD player. Use XP and Vista to copy the files from computer to CD-RW and back to the other computer. The CD-RW acts like a removable hard drive D:/

I still like my flashcard idea as being the easiest but go with what works the easiest for you - not for me. :) The iPod would work the same as I believe they plug into USB ports.
 
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You should be able to find the folder containing the music (not through iTunes), right click it, select "sharing" and check the appropriate box to share that folder on your network. The other computer should then see that folder from the "My Network Places" icon on the desktop. That's what I've done in my house and it works great. I'm not familiar with Vista, though. My machines are both running XP.
 
thanks to all. feel free to keep the dialogue going. welcoming all input and will consider and try many of the things listed and sure that all the contributors to this thread will learn as we go...thanks, again. really appreciate all the feedback and will keep an eye on this thread.
 
Nazman said:
thanks to all. feel free to keep the dialogue going. welcoming all input and will consider and try many of the things listed and sure that all the contributors to this thread will learn as we go...thanks, again. really appreciate all the feedback and will keep an eye on this thread.
Click to expand...


Well both main approaches should work -- normally what D-Mass describes would be the way to do it for normal files, but since we are talking ITunes here the earlier suggestion of using the Ipod is the easiest way I think. IN fact as long as you have syncing enabled (in the preferences section -- its the default) I think the Itunes on your computer will automatically download any new music off your Ipod won't it? All you have to do is pluf the Ipod in on one computer, have it sync + upload, then plug it into other one and have it sync and download. Or am I missing something?
 
Bricklayer said:
Well both main approaches should work -- normally what D-Mass describes would be the way to do it for normal files, but since we are talking ITunes here the earlier suggestion of using the Ipod is the easiest way I think. IN fact as long as you have syncing enabled (in the preferences section -- its the default) I think the Itunes on your computer will automatically download any new music off your Ipod won't it? All you have to do is pluf the Ipod in on one computer, have it sync + upload, then plug it into other one and have it sync and download. Or am I missing something?
Click to expand...

Syncing will always update the iPod to match what's in iTunes -- the actual song files wouldn't be moved/removed from the iPod, but the library would only allow you to access the songs from the most recent sync. You can use the iPod as a removable drive (you have to select this as an option through iTunes), but the songs all have wonky names on the iPod so you'd have to go through and listen to each song individually to know what it is -- obviously, a pain in the rear.

Easiest thing to do would be to either use a flash drive to move songs from one computer to another, or figure out how to network the two computers together and share the music files.

Sadly, Apple makes it intentionally difficult to share music between iPods.
 
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