Yesterday afternoon I was downloading songs from iTUNES onto Christine's iPOD. I put eleven songs onto the iPod and so far they have cost a little under £100 per song. Can anyone beat this? Does anyone want to beat it. So how did it cost so much…?





It all started when Christine, out of the blue, mentioned she wanted an iPod for last Christmas. Now for the past forty years she has always wanted to hit the sales for fashions of one sort or another, but this year it’s an iPod. Christine and technology are not two words that normally go together well but that’s what she wanted so OK.


As we were off to the Bahamas to spend some time with Alex, Dave and the grandkids I decided to get the iPod from the duty free shop at the airport and save £25. So I’m in the shop and the man is saying I will need a docking station with speakers and a carrying case as well as different earphones. So now I’ve spent over £200 but because it’s duty free think how much I’ve saved! The more you spend the more you save, who do I sound like?


So we arrive in The Bahamas with the iPod, docking station, etc. but with no songs on it. Alex puts some of her music on and Jamie who just happened to be out there at the same time added an album of Katie Melua which became Christine’s favourite. So there she is sitting outside in the January sunshine making a patchwork quilt, earphones plugged in, grandkids playing in the pool and the dog sitting by the side of her chair waiting for any scraps. Life’s perfect.


But then one afternoon I decide to add some of my type of music to Christine’s iPod as I decided this should really be a ‘We’ thing, something we should share.
So I plug it into Alex’s computer and wipe the iPod clean. Everything gone. No Katie Melua, nothing and Jamie’s now left the Island so I can’t get it back. With a struggle I do manage to put some of the songs back and replace the iPod in the docking station and say nothing. Christine will never work out how to play different artists so will just believe she has not yet reached the Katie Melua songs. Wrong. I have it explained to me that the iPod is an ‘I’ thing meaning hers and I had better make plans to get Katie back when we get home. “OK” says I.


So where does the £100 a song come from. Well when we get home I plug the iPod software disc into my computer and a message pops up saying it can’t find some file or other. Can’t be right, I run the install program again. Same message ‘can’t find file’. So after some investigation I find that my computer runs on Windows ME and iPods don’t. I now have an iPod, well Christine has an iPod that we can’t load songs onto. So still no Katie. To complicate matter further Alex sends me an iTunes gift voucher for my birthday to put on our iPod. So what to do?


I’m now down the computer shop looking for a new computer. The man’s saying words like laptop, wireless, modem, printer, etc. I explain that I have no idea what he’s talking about so he makes it easy he tells me about 2mb cache, 1024 mb ram, 60 gb this and 128 shared somethings. Why is it so much easier when you’re a spotty 18 year old and think everyone over 40 is an idiot? I come out the shop carrying a lot of boxes and a few hundred pounds lighter.


So finally I load the software, download Katie Melua and put the songs on the iPod. Eleven songs on the album, cost just under £100 each but what the heck Christine can now listen to Katie on our iPod and I still have my voucher to spend. Having downloaded the songs and put them on our iPod I thought I would also burn them onto a CD. I have just spent three hours trying to understand how to do that. I think I need the spotty 18 year old again. It can’t be this hard.



For more information about iPods, go to Love The Pod