Deleting and syncing videos / iPod software version

Question

Two questions:
1) I have videos downloaded through iTunes on my computer and synced on my iPod. They are taking up way too much space on my computer's hard drive, though, and I was wondering if I delete them from my iTunes Library and off my computer, will they remain on my iPod the next time I sync?
2) I have an outdated version of iPod software. How important is it to have the most current version?

Answer 1

1) I have videos downloaded through iTunes on my computer and synced on my iPod. They are taking up way too much space on my computer's hard drive, though, and I was wondering if I delete them from my iTunes Library and off my computer, will they remain on my iPod the next time I sync?
No, if you delete from the library and sync then they will be deleted. You could either switch to manual managment of your iPod or you can remove the physical files from your computer while retaining the entries for them in the iTunes library. When you try to sync again iTunes will report that it cannot sync certain files as they cannot be found, but it should leave the previously synced files on your iPod. You can disable the warning if you choose. You will still be able to add new videos onto the iPod by adding them into iTunes, then syncing. You can also remove items you no longer want on the iPod by deleting their library entries. I would stress, however, that this method should be avoided if it results in the iPod containing the only copy of a particular file because the iPod could easily be lost, stolen or need restoring at some point. When (and not if!) you restore your iPod, you will lose all the files on it. For this reason a better appraoch would be to get an external drive to hold data you don't want on your main computer & sync from that.
2) I have an outdated version of iPod software. How important is it to have the most current version?
Only really matters if there's a new feature or bug fix which affects you. Since Apple don't publish a list of bug fixes it can be hard to tell. Me, I'm all for the latest version but others are more cautious. Horror tales of "the update bricked my iPod" are common enough on here, but you don't generally hear the voices of happier users so I wouldn't worry too much.
tt2