LET'S HEAR IT FOR GOOGLE

More than a month ago, my desktop computer died & I was forced to take action; buying a new computer & attempting to save as much data as possible from the old one.

Thanks to the fine folks at Best Buy, I was able to purchase a nice Toshiba laptop computer.  Through their "Geek Squad", I was able to have most of my files -- & I had a LOT of them -- saved on to a separate hard drive. That was a big relief.  Trust me on that one.

What was NOT saved, was the files for my iTunes library, of which I had almost 4,000 songs.  The [not so] fine folks at Apple where not able/unable to be as helpful as those at Best Buy. Only the songs I purchased via iTunes -- 25 songs -- could be reinstalled into my account.  All the other songs -- which I loaded myself, from my own CD's -- could not be saved/reloaded by Apple.  Something having to do with copyright laws, since I did not buy the songs directly through iTunes.

So ... as I was learning all the nuances of my new computer, as well as the new software installed &/or upgraded, I was constantly thinking of my iPod, which still had all my music as I originally installed in it, but now I had no way of creating play lists or burning CD's from my iTunes library.

While the explanation from Apple for the "lost" songs made sense, the thought of "reloading" all my music into iTunes from my CD's -- not to mention recreating all the special play lists I had made -- was neither the answer I was looking for, nor a project I wanted to take on, no matter how I much time I could/would allot to it.

Time to Google !!!

Searching the Internet, I found sites for several companies offering/selling software which would reinstall music from my iPod back into iTunes.  I finally decided on system called MediaWidget.

With the "help" of THE WOBBLER (above), I was able to download the MediaWidget software, which then copied all the songs & play lists from my iPod ... and -- as it was supposed to do -- repopulated my iTunes library with all my music. 

So far, everything seems to be back to ... ah ... "normal" when it comes to my iTunes collection of music.

Thank goodness for Google !!