here's what i've discovered about the windows version. if i modify a file using winamp (or anything else for that manner), mp3tofid immediately recognizes it as a new file (i see 1 empty fids in the summary screen), and deletes the old fid. not sure why.

This all depends on how your id3 tag editor works. If it writes out a new file, deletes the old one and renames the new file to the old name, then you have created a new file with a new inode number. If it just opens the file in read/write mode and makes the changes inside the file, then the inode number remains the same.

i dont understand whats happening in rsync i guess

You can increase rsync's verbosity by placing the --verbose on the command line multiple times.

Pim