Ok, I have a IPOD, I have about 15 hours of music on it, It is music I downloaded from CD's and free downloads, so it is not part of my "online" Itunes library, it was on my computer itune program.

Guess what, my computer crashed and I lost it, I am told by my son, if I hook up my iPod, and sync, all the songs on iPod will be lost, since those songs are no longer in my itune folder.

Is there a way to have it take the songs off the IPOD and put it back in the computer?

I use this to totally bypass iTunes (piece of crap software) and add music and backup music:
SharePod

You install the executable file right onto the root of the iPod and run it from there.

Good luck!

Did the trick, was afraid I was going to have to wait till I was back in the States to change my iPod music

Cool! Well done.

Funny though... my daughter has one of them too and although I HATE the software, she insists on using it.

Anyway, I notice that when it is hooked to the computer, it will sync both ways. What I mean is that the computer will look for stuff on her Ipod and if it's on there but not the computer library, it will upload it from the Ipod to the library. It will also sync from the computer library to the Ipod itself of course.

I may have a older cheaper version, but the issue is that anything on it, was put on it by you, and will only sync to your computer, well my computer was basically destroyed in transit to China, so I had to get it rebuild, and lost all of the songs that was in it, and all of the ongs I had was not saved to the www.itune web site, but just on my laptop. I did not buy the songs from them, but downloaded from CD's.

So I am told, that had I hooked up, it would have considered this a new set up and would have wiped my iPod.

Ok, I get it now. The difference is that my daughter has hers set up using the itunes website as a "cloud". That must be why it syncs both ways as anything that is in the library is also stored in her itunes library online. I just assumed that was how it all worked.

And using the cloud you assure yourself that you do not own your music, you merely get a license that allows you to use it... until they want to revoke that license.

Well, I am not sure how it is all working then (actually, I can't stand the Ipod). I do know that her software has a cloud feature. I also know that she has songs that we put on the Ipod from CDs as well as songs that were purchased from itunes itself. If you hook the Ipod to the computer, it will search out and sync both ways. In her itunes library (online) it will even show the songs that we put on the Ipod from the CDs. It's a Touch 4th generation if that makes a difference. To be honest though, the workings of it are beyond me and I don't care to invest enough time into it to learn it. I'll stick with my standard Sandisk MP3 player. LOL.

I have an old Sony mp3 player that works great: you plug it in any computer, see its directory structure, and move songs, podcasts, etc into it easily. No need to give the vendor all of your personal information.

Right. That is one of the issues I have with the Ipod.