I was under the belief that the newest iPods were USB 2.0 compaitable, I think you just need to buy the cable for it.

The I5100 has one 4-pin firewire port, so you would need to get a different cord than supplied with your iPod. For the same price, however, you can get a PCMCIA 6-pin Firewire port and use the cord that comes with your iPod. The extra two pins in the 6-pin firewire port versus the 4-pin firewire port are there to charge any devices that can be charged through firewire. However, I have heard that not all PCMCIA firewire cards charge the iPod.

My suggestion to you is to just get the PCMCIA card and use the cord supplied with the iPod.

What extras do you speak of?

The newer Ipods come with a 6 wire to 4 wire ADAPTOR for its firewire connection. They also have a USB docking option for windows.

I bought the 20 gig Ipod the other week. What a pain setting the thing up. Do not buy anything less than the 20 gig model. If you buy the 10 gig model, by the time you get all of the "extras" you need, it costs the same as the 20 gig, but you are still stuck with 10 less gig. Take your computer to an apple store if one is near you, that is what I did and it saved me a lot of time. I have a Dell inspiron 8100 with a fire wall and it worked with the adapter that came with the Ipod. You can buy a $20 cord to use the USB 2.0 port (which my older dell does not have). After an hour I was able to set up the computer. Nice machine, but I have to use the Music Match software which I am not crazy about when I use the suffle program. Hope this helps.

 

 

yeah... what other extras? i asked in the apple board and the guy said this is the only extra thing i need:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/70104/wo/ee4nDeXZLrnv298xf5k1eiuzZ4d/6.7.0.5.3.15.33.9.0

The other extras are the dock, some software, and maybe an adapter.

20Gb & 40 Gb G3 (3rd Generation) iPods come with a docking station, leather pouch (careful it scratches the metal iPod surface) and a headphone extender/remote.

I only use the dock (which is a neccessity) but for the minimal increase in price its worth it. The iPods do come with a small (1 inch) 6 - 4 pin converter (included in the price).

You can't charge with a 4 pin firewire port or USB (any version). You can charge using a 6 pin firewire port.

The iPod comes with a normal AC Adapter (UK) which uses the same cable (very clever) as the firewire cable.

Its a beautiful device, but the games and the rest of the rubbish aren't that great. Oh and the headphones are good, but the quality of the cables isn't great (actual cables not the sound quality)

I also have the dock, but it's not actually a necessity... you *can* just use the cables. Of course, it's much more convenient to not have to plug anything in, and I got the 15GB because of the reasons that GraemeW cited.

Also, the Apple Store link above is broken, so I'm not sure what you were told you'd need, but everything you need should come in the box. True, if you want to use USB, you'll have to buy a USB cable, but since you have firewire, and the iPod comes with an adapter to hook up to your firewire port, why not just use that?

Check out this site - it's the best one I found for iPods, and they have a great forum where you can ask questions, with many helpful regulars:

http://www.ipodlounge.com/forums/

Do what I did, and just get a iRiver iHP-120, LOT MORE FEATURES, for same price, and if you buy from Amazon UK its like $250 ;)