iPod Managing an existing library of MP3's - Humbling

[JackVa1]

I'm really struggling understanding ITUNES with a new Touch. I bought it for my wife and I just don't get the time to play around, test results etc.
I can't seem to anticipate how she will use the device and stay ahead of her needs in order to show her around properly. I am getting closer though so here goes my latest question:

We have her music and my music on our family PC. This consists of thousands of old MP3's collected from Napster or and Ripping over the years from CD's.

I allowed Itunes to discover her music from her music folder and it made a lot of decisions about Genre, and in some cases found music she just does not want on the Touch. Itunes also sync'd "unknown" artists and tracks which I guess I need to go and name myself. Further it did not find my music which is on the PC under my user name. (Windows XP). I dragged an album from my music folder into her music directory and Itunes still did not find it for some reason......Eventually I just opened two windows and dragged it in - Perfect!

My question is: Should we slow down clear the IPOD and just manually add our existing music to the device in an organized fashion? Should I just drag it in like I do with other programs? Do most users manually add things?

Also - Is my experience typical or are we just old people and dumb? I work for a large computer firm and am actually fairly PC saavy, but managing this IPOD has humbled me for the time being.

With this varied amount of music on our PC I think we need to use the manual settings.

I thank you in advance for some thoughts

 

[miles01110]

My question is: Should we slow down clear the IPOD and just manually add our existing music to the device in an organized fashion? Should I just drag it in like I do with other programs? Do most users manually add things?

How big is the iPod? For my Classic I just let it sync everything since I have the space. For my iPod touch I have an "iPod touch" playlist that I have it set to sync only the songs contained in that playlist because the capacity is smaller. I'm fairly diligent about giving everything an album name and keeping things as organized as possible... you might be different.

 

[JackVa1]

It's 8 Gig and I expect she will never fill it with music, but perhaps photo's, viseo down the road.

I guess someone with a large old inventory of music should slow down and manually move the music in since it's not uniformly named on the PC. Some is withing folders and organized and some is just random singles. I am trying to figure out if we need to reorganize the PC better and then go automatic or do the initial loads a little slower.

If I fix up some songs in Itunes does it make changes to the PC files as well as the stored music? If not, I could screw upthe ipod every time I re-sync - no?



Thanks

 

[miles01110]

If I fix up some songs in Itunes does it make changes to the PC files as well as the stored music? If not, I could screw upthe ipod every time I re-sync - no?

Yes, it will change the metadata.