Danica’s iPod was the one Christmas gift she bought herself this year. She really deserves more, but times are tight right now. Anyway, after a week of getting her music library slowly transffered onto the thing, it quit mounting properly on her Sony Vaio laptop. (If it matters, it stopped working right after she ran Windows Update. She is now officially scared stiff of ever running Windows Update again. Ever. Things just keep breaking when she does it.)
Some digging resulted in the discovery of the advice to go out and get a FireWire PCMCIA card (aka, a CardBus card) for the laptop. Plugging the iPod into a USB controller is apparently finicky at best, impossible at worst.
So I went out and bought her an Adaptec DuoConnect card, which has two USB 2.0 ports, one traditional FireWire (aka, IEEE 1394) port and another “mini” FireWire port. At first I thought it wouldn’t work because I hadn’t noticed the part about not buying a combo-device.
Fortunately, it worked without a hitch and Danica has her iPod back. Which is great for me because I get to listen to more of her great music selections. So rule of thumb for iPods: they love FireWire, they hate USB.
Doesn’t sound like the iPod hated USB to begin with. Sounds more like Windows broke something. The iPod is probably just fine :-)
George
21 Jan 05 at 11:13 AM
No, the iPod doesn’t hate USB. Windows is a broken OS. You said it right the first time: “She is now officially scared stiff of ever running Windows Update again. Ever. Things just keep breaking when she does it.” This is, unfortunately, an all too well known occurence. Makes you wonder why Bill Gates has so much money doesn’t it? When car manufacturers build a lemon they have to take it back. Not Microsoft.
David
23 Jan 05 at 9:32 PM