I'm about to chunk this thing out of the window.

Question

I have never in my life owned a peice of apple products. I decided 2 months ago to purchase a 30gb Ipod for somewhere around $300 in order to provide me with music for my office. Well this has been the biggest waste of money in my life and I cannot get over the fact that this f**kin thing wont work. I have two computers (one at work, and one at home). My computer at home is my main linked computer, I have all my music on that machine and that is where I update my Ipod. Everything works fine there and has since the day I got it.
The machine at work I just want to listen to the music on my ipod and this f**kin crap wont work. I called Apple 2 months ago when I first got it and all of their suggestions were failures. (do they even know what they are doing?) This is what has/is happening in the order in which it happened.
1. I reformatted my computer.
2. I installed itunes,quicktime, and ipod updater from the disc that came with my ipod (followed every instruction)
3. restarted the machine per the request of the install.
4. plugged in my ipod and ran the updater.
5. itunes launched and there was no ipod recognized, but it was in my disc management list.
6. i had to change the drive letter... i choose I:\
7. Itunes now recognized my ipod and displayed the songs on the ipod, only in grey and i couldnt play them...????
8. I ejected the ipod and restarted my machine.
9. plugged in ipod, itunes launched and showed the same thing as before - all of my music was in grey and inactive.
10. I went to my computer, now the ipod was not there.
11. went to disk management, and the ipod was not there.
This is the craziest f**kin thing ive ever seen and no one can give us an answer for it. It makes no sense that my machine at home it works fine (so no problem with the ipod software), yet the comp at work is not working...
ive tested, reset and diagnosed all of the usb drives on my machine, they are all fine. this computer is a workhorse and has the same exact OS with the same updates as the one at home....
WHAT IS THE DEAL APPLE??????
I was actually thinking about purchasing a G5 to replace my home pc for my webwork.... well with mass problems like these and absolutely no help from the manufacturer.... i think ill just stick with my PC this is absolutely rediculous.... and if i call you, you want to charge me something like $30 an hour to help me when i already spent $300 on the f**kin paperweight in front of me..
A sincerely unhappy customer
30gb IPOD VIDEO   Windows XP   THIS IS CRAP

Answer 1

It does pay to be nice sometimes. Apple employees do occasionally post on the boards, but I doubt that they monitor every last thread. And yes, they do charge for tech support, but it is not $30 an hour. It's $49 for one problem, or $59 for the Applecare plan. Which, to tell the truth, really isn't the worst thing to purchase for the iPod.
Now, from reading your post, it looks as though you want to listen to the music that's on your iPod through a computer with an iTunes program on it that your iPod is not linked to.
Do this:
Connect your iPod.
Click Edit > Preferenes
Click the iPod tab
Select "manually manage songs and playlists"
Click OK
Your iTunes will say "updating iPod Do Not Disconnect" at the top
Wait for it to say iPod Update is complete
Click on your Library in the source list
Click on your iPod in the source list
Are the songs lit up now?
CG