My Karma seems to have died a horrible death (maybe not permanently, Mark Lord says he thinks he can fix it) so in the meantime I have purchased a refurb iPod on eBay, 20 GB, $70. This is the first Apple product I have ever owned.

Apparently iTunes is the only method of music management the iPod will talk to, and since it is different from what I'm used to, I know it can't possibly be any good.

I have found one thing about the iPod I am not entranced with, but maybe there's a workaround. At present the only way I have of recharging it is by connecting it to my computer through the USB port. This is fine, no hardship, except that the moment I connect it, the "Now Playing" list goes away. If I am 32 minutes into a 74 minute track on a 10-CD audiobook, this is inconvenient if I don't remember to write down exactly where I was before I plug it in. I have ordered an AC plug-in USB charger adapter from DealExtreme so I won't have to have my computer running to charge the iPod. Will this change its behavior of deleting the Now Playing list when I plug it in? I have configured iTunes and the iPod to not start iTunes automatically when I connect it to the USB port, but this did not make any difference. The Now Playing list still goes away.

The second question is about iTunes. Even though I have un-checked the box that says "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" (and I especially checked the box to "Disable automatic synching to iPods and iPhones") anything I add to the iTunes library gets copied into it, rather than just setting up a pointer like the owners manual says it will do.

I'm thinking this is most likely because my music files (all 150 GB of hierarchically arranged and tagged files) are located on my D: drive (with backups to E: mirrored drive and G: USB external drive) and the iTunes music library is by default on the C: drive, and from what I have read it is not trivial to change that default. Am I correct in this supposition? Can I move the iTunes library to my D: drive, if so how, and will it then start using pointers to the music instead of copying the files into the library? My C: drive is not a large drive, it was intended to hold Windows and the Program Files, but data is stored on other drives.

All in all, I am very impressed with the iPod. Hardware wise, I think it is far superior to the somewhat fragile Karma with a far simpler mechanical interface. I mean, the Karma with those fiddly little separate buttons for volume up and volume down, that little joystick that is so hard to press in the right direction without really looking at it, separate on-off switch, that fragile scroll wheel that always hits the ground first if you drop it (and just what does the "click" function on that scroll wheel do, anyway?)... the iPod does all of those functions and more with that elegant "scrub disk" on the front of it. I guess the software interface is a different story, although for my usage (primarily audiobooks) the Karma UI is no advantage, and the FF/REW function with the scrub disk on the iPod is really, really good. In all fairness, the iPod has had five or six more years of development time, who knows what the Karma would be like today had it continued.

Anyway, is there a way to preserve the Now Playing list when recharging; and can I get iTunes to use pointers instead of copying the files?

tanstaafl.