Annoying Playlist Shuffle. Help!

Question

Hello guys. I recently acquired an iPod Shuffle from the Apple store. It was working quite well with my podcasts, but lately this is what the unit's been doing.
I transfer my podcasts before autofilling with my music. I order my podcast using my particular order preference. However, when the unit ends synchronizing with the iPod, the podcasts playlist is not in my order! Usually what it does is flip the playlist so my first podcast is the last. No matter how many times I go in to iTunes and change the order, it always flips it! It's becoming annoying!!!!!!!

Answer 1

I tried something different this morning, but couldn’t test it completely. Here’s what I did:
I started with an empty Shuffle and my daily podcasts (about 5). My podcasts are organized within a smartlist, from there I transfer them to a normal playlist if I’m going to listen to them directly from my PC. What I used to do was just dump the smart playlist into the iPod, Sync and go. What would happen (and still does happen) is that the Shuffle plays the podcasts in the order in which they’re transferred, not in the order I put them.
So this morning I sent the podcasts to my iPod one by one. I did this and waited until the transfer of one was complete, then I started the next. The playlist looked fine and I ejected my Shuffle. I didn’t plug in the Shuffle right then and there to check if the order was ok, instead I connected it back to the PC while iTunes was up. The playlist was rearranged automagically by iTunes!.
The problem is either in the Shuffle’s firmware or somewhere within iTunes. I’ll try to test it again as soon as I have some new podcasts downloaded.