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I have four kids and they are getting older and two of them now have an iPod. My wife and I also have iPods. To complicate things we have multiple PCs around the home, the topology is something like:

PCs                OS          Users
Husband PC         Win7        Husband
Shared PC1         Win7        Wife, child1,2,3,4
Shared PC2         Mac OSX     Wife, child1,2,3,4
Child1 PC          Win7        Child1
Child2 PC          Win7        Child2
FileServer         Win2008R2   everyone (over the network)

Users with iPods: Husband, Wife, Child1, Child2

I'm not really sure how I am supposed to manage all this, it's doing my head in. I don't really care which music program I use (i'm getting a bit sick of iTunes), however I don't know of an alternative that syncs easily with iPods or can manage podcasts well.

Questions:

  • Should I have a central music store on the File Server and then point each machine to it?
  • How would that work if music is purchased on iTunes/Amazon/Other - would all the libraries get updated?
  • Where do I put the libraries?
  • How would this work with multiple iPods?
  • What music program should I use?
  • Does each iPod need to be tethered to one machine?

EDIT: Would streaming help? Something like Windows Home Server and then stream everything to the PCs? I'm not sure how this would work with iPod syncing though.

Help!

Thanks, Mark.

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  • For some reason I just hate iTunes so when a friends asks me to transfer songs from my PC to their iPod I always use Floola, simple and free. That might however not be enough for some advanced features, I just wouldn't know.
    – GummiV
    Commented Jul 23, 2010 at 10:11
  • 1
    great question.
    – Sam Holder
    Commented Jul 23, 2010 at 10:30
  • Floola's great for basic iPods, but unfortunately it doesn't work with iPod Touch/iPhone...
    – Brian Kintz
    Commented Jul 23, 2010 at 11:45

1 Answer 1

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We have the same situation in our house, and for want of a better solution we just have a single machine that everyone uses for iTunes and ipod sync. All of the media is held on a file server, and is added to the iTunes PC's local itunes library.

Have tried to stream the media library from the file server, and while that works just fine for playing on the PC itself, it won't allow ipod sync.

We also use one common apple ID for purchasing media/apps. This way, anything that we buy can be used on any of the ipods.

Doesn't answer your question fully, but it is a relatively successful way to manage things, and you only need to install iTunes on one machine.

Andy

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  • Thanks Andy - this is what I've done and seems to work OK.
    – Mark Allison
    Commented Sep 14, 2010 at 16:15

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