Hi folks!  Sorry about the long hiatus.  With the holidays, work and family, I've been pretty busy these last few weeks.  I did, however, run across something of interest while my sons were visiting for Christmas break.  In my previous software review of Helium Music Manager, I think I left little to my readers' imagination as to my strong dislike of all-things iTunes.  Believe it or not, I left a couple of even bigger issues that I have with iPod/iTunes out of that carefully worded (and rather witty) rant about Apple's flagship product.  One of them was that once you sync your iPod to your computer and upload your library to it, you can't sync it (your iPod) with another computer (or in the case of multiple log-ins with Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP/Vista, a different log-in on the same computer) without first erasing all the music already on your iPod.  The other (and perhaps the biggest) one:  you can only sync from your PC to your iPod; you can not sync from your iPod back to your PC.

Now before you start moaning on behalf of musicians the world over as well as the RIAA, Lars, let me state that I understand (to a point) that this is most likely so people can't easily share music files with each other without paying for them (aka piracy).  And, I'm sure the iTunes store isn't losing money with that little bit of skullduggery, but do let us stick to the point.  The problem I have is this:  What if my hard drive crashes and takes my entire music/video/picture library with it?  What if my home is involved in a fire and my computer, pictures, CDs and DVDs, but not my iPod, are destroyed?  What if some nozzle steals my laptop along with my back-up external hard drive?  Not only do I lose my library and my computer...please compound that loss with an erasure of my iPod's library as well, Mr. Jobs!  No, it's no problem that your $350 mp3 player is just that and nothing else.  Really, I didn't want to use it as a backup drive, even though your company used that very idea as a selling point.  Again, I digress but I have to ask...have you taken the first step yet, Steve?

Enter:  iPod Copy (iPC) by Wide Angle Software.  Now this, ladies and gentleman is a great piece of software, and a must have for anyone that owns an iPod.  It does just what iTunes and Apple (as well as the RIAA) don't want you to be able to do, and that is retrieve your music from your iPod and put it back on to your computer!  Of course, you can sync your iPod back to your computer with iPC as well, using it just as you would iTunes, but you do so without the iTunes bloatware overhead.

"Overhead?  What overhead do you mean," you ask?  Well, let me explain.  When you install iTunes on to your computer, it sets itself up so that it loads when Windows loads and it runs quietly in the background, even when you aren't using it.  And it does this to the tune (pun intended) of 6-20+MB of memory for a program that isn't even actively running!  That's what it uses to do N-O-T-H-I-N-G!  Now, that may not seem like much when you're running 1 or 2GB of memory, but this isn't the only program that tries to nickel-and-dime you to death by exhibiting this kind of sneaky behavior...and yes, I call it sneaky when it neither gives me the option of turning it off when I run the setup app, nor gives me the power to turn  it off in the "Preferences" portion of the running application.  It does not announce itself in the system tray, either, so the only way that you'll know it's there and eating up system resources is to go into the Task Manager (or other such diagnostic app) and see what's there (if you do, look for "AppleMobileDeviceServices.exe", "iPodService.exe" and "QuickTime.exe") .  iPC doesn't do this.

In fact, when you are actively using it, iPC uses about 35MB of RAM and 7MB of HDD space, which is quite reasonable for how robust it is.  iTunes on the other hand (ignoring its inactive overhead) costs you almost 60MB of RAM and at least 146MB of HDD space, and you're able to do less with it.  Granted, you can't play your PC's music library in iPC (but you can play your iPod's music library even if you don't have iTunes installed), but seeing as iTunes is woefully inadequate to that task anyway, you're really only losing the ability to play your music poorly.  To me, that's 2 negatives making a positive!  And as you can see from the screen shot above, it looks remarkably like iTunes, so you don't have to re-learn a completely new interface to get up and running quickly.  A quick rundown of all the nice features:

• You can get very fast 2-way syncing with your PC to the iPod, and from the iPod back on to your PC.  It took me about 10 minutes to grab 2,000 songs (including tags and album art) off my son's iPod without iTunes installed.
• It can sync not only your music but also your tags, album art, playlists, movies, videos, podcasts, audiobooks, pictures, contacts, calendar and notes without iTunes installed.
• It can play your iPod's library on you PC without iTunes installed.
• It prevents iTunes (if you decide to keep it for nostalgic purposes) from loading up and auto-syncing when you dock your iPod to your PC.
• iPC auto-senses your iPod when you start it up.
• Looks and "feels" like iTunes, so there's no time taken up to learn a new interface.  A couple of mouse clicks and you're all done!
• iPC does not work with the iPod Touch or the iPhone, but Wide Angle has a program for them, as well:  TouchCopy.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of feeling like I only rented my iPod from Apple for all that money (what else can I call it when I pay to possess something that I have no control over and can only make superficial changes to?).  A little analogy to put it in to perspective:  When I go to Sears and buy a Craftsman wrench, I don't have the salesguy (or girl) telling me not to use it as a hammer.  I don't have the manufacturer making the wrench in such a way that I'm unable to use it as a pry bar if I so unwisely desire.  They sell me their product with the faith that I have enough sense to use it for it's intended purpose.  But if I do decide to use it in a way that wasn't anticipated by the manufacturer or the store, that's ok, too.  I paid my hard earned money for it, so it's my wrench to do with as I decide.  And you don't see the folks making the nuts and bolts having a fit and suing the wrench manufacturers because their wrenches fit and turn all those nuts and bolts, right?  "Damn you guys at Snap-on, and all your confounded wrenches!  We want the end user to pay royalties to tighten and loosen our nuts and bolts with our specially made "turn monitoring" wrenches! We give the wrench away for free, but we make that money back by selling the toolbox for $350 as well as charging $1.99 per turn!  Sure it only turns what we tell it to when we tell it to, the wrench will only fit in our toolbox and the toolbox will only fit our wrench, but it's our technology!  You're starving our families, you know!  We might be willing to lease our licensed toolbox technology to you for say....$50 per wrench."

If you feel the same way, then what in the blue blazes are ya waitin' fer?  Go get iPod Copy!  For $20, you'll never have to worry about losing your library again, and you can completely dump iTunes...hell, that alone makes it a steal at twice the price!

Oh, by the way...the Jolly Roger is free!

Steve@Dall-Tech