Q: If I buy an iPod in the U.S. will it work here in Ireland, and what equipment do I need to get to make it work here?

- Katie

A: Yes, you can buy an iPod in the U.S. and use it anywhere. The only real issue with compatibility would be power adapter requirements, however the iPod does not include a power adapter, so you would need to purchase this separately anyway. You should therefore wait until you return home to purchase any additional accessories that use external power, as these will not necessarily be compatible with the European power systems.

Any other accessories, however, such as headphones and USB-based accessories are standard and will work anywhere.

The only other caveat is iTunes Gift Cards, in case you’re tempted to purchase one of these along with your iPod nano. iTunes Store Gift Cards only work for stores in the country where they were purchased, so if you buy an iTunes Gift Card in the U.S., you will need to set up an account on the U.S. iTunes Store, with a U.S. mailing address.

Q: I’m in the market for a microphone for my fourth-generation iPod. There don’t appear to be many available. Belkin has three choices and they skip over the fourth-generation iPod. Could you please tell me which microphones will work with the 4G iPod?

- Paul

A: Unfortunately, the iPod audio recorder interface changed between the fourth and fifth-generation iPod models. As of the 5G iPod, voice recorders began using the standard iPod Dock Connector port, whereas previous voice recorders connected to the remote/accessory port on the top of the fourth-generation iPod.

Since the 4G iPod was discontinued three years ago, this means that none of the voice recording accessories presently available on the market today will work with the 4G iPod. As a result, your only really viable option is to look around for older voice recorders that may be available from other second-hand sources such as eBay.

Some of the voice recorders that we have reviewed in the past that are compatible with the 4G iPod include the Belkin TuneTalk for iPod (iLounge rating: B), Belkin Universal Microphone Adapter for iPod (iLounge Rating: C+), Belkin Voice Recorder for iPod (iLounge rating: B) and Griffin iTalk Voice Recorder for iPod (iLounge rating: A-). Any of these options will work fine with the 4G iPod, with the only challenge being actually finding one, since these have been off the market for over two years now.

Q: I am thinking of getting an iPod Shuffle (2nd generation I believe). Is iTunes the ONLY place that we can go to download music? I am trying to find a place where we can download FREE music to our iPod shuffle. Thanks. Hope you can help me out here.

- Nina

A: The first and most important thing to keep in mind is that you do not have to obtain your music online—you can import any music CDs you already own into iTunes directly and then transfer these onto your iPod Shuffle. Most new iPod owners generally already have a reasonable library on CD and this is often the first and easiest source of music for your iPod.

Although music purchased from the iTunes Store comes in the AAC format, the iPod supports both this format and the industry-standard MP3 format, so any tracks you can obtain in the MP3 format will play fine on your iPod as they will on any other digital audio player.

For obtaining digital content online, there are a number of options, and these are increasing dramatically with more music stores beginning to sell music in the unprotected MP3 format. Previously, iTunes was one of the very few places that offered iPod-friendly digital downloads as most other music stores were locked into the Windows Media Audio protected formats which were not supported by the iPod or iTunes. Now, however, services like eMusic and Amazon.com offer digital downloads as unprotected MP3 files that will play on almost every digital music player available with no built-in restrictions.

In addition to the major online music stores such as Amazon.com, there are also a number of sites available where limited selections of free, legal music may be obtained. You can get more information in our Guide to Free Music for your iPod or iPhone.

Q: I recently purchased some new songs on iTunes and when I try and connect my iPod to download them it says that my computer will not allow me to put them on there. I am using the same computer that I used to put the rest of the songs on there...I don’t know what to do. I can open up my iTunes and play the songs on my computer but I can’t put them on my iPod. Please help me!!

- Sarah

A: The most common cause of this problem is that your computer has not been properly authorized to play your purchased content, and therefore iTunes will not transfer these tracks onto your iPod. Even if your computer has been previously authorized, sometimes a hardware upgrade or an iPod software update can affect the ability for this to work properly.

You can re-authorize your computer by selecting Store, Authorize Computer from the iTunes menu:

Enter your iTunes Store account name and password, and iTunes will RE-authorize your computer and report how many computers are presently authorized on your account:

Note that if you are simply RE-authorizing your existing computer, this count should not increase, as iTunes should already recognize your computer as having been previously authorized. However, if you have recently made a significant hardware change to your computer (such as replacing the main system board), it is possible that iTunes may see your computer as a “new” computer and use up another authorization. This should not be a concern unless you have already used up all five of your permitted authorizations, in which case you can go to your iTunes Store account and reset all of your authorizations to zero once per year.

If your computer has been successfully authorized and these tracks will still not transfer to your iPod, the other possibility is that you have reached the account limit on your iPod itself. Your iPod may only contain purchased content from a maximum of five different accounts, so if you have loaded purchased content onto your iPod in the past from other computers and/or other iTunes Store accounts, this may affect your ability to authorize your iPod for any additional content that you have purchased with a sixth account. To resolve this, you will either need to remove ALL of the content purchased with one of these other accounts, or perform a “Restore” on your iPod to erase it and return it to factory settings.

Finally, even if you are not at your account limit, a “Restore” is still the best final step if you still cannot get your music to transfer onto your iPod, since this will return it back to its original out-of-the-box settings and you will be starting with a clean slate.

Q: I have a fifth generation iPod classic. I was wondering it there was a way to convert the MP4 files that iTunes uses for its songs to MP3 for Windows Media Player. Can this be done or do I have to rip all of my CDs again?

- Liz

A: There are several tools available that will convert the MPEG-4 AAC format tracks that iTunes uses into other formats, including iTunes itself. However, you may want to consider whether you actually want or need to do this.

The first consideration is that both AAC and MP3 are “lossy” formats. This means that when you encode your music into one of these formats, audio information is discarded ("lost") to produce a smaller file. In most cases, this is information that the average human ear cannot hear anyway, so it is usually not noticeable. Unfortunately, however, when converting from one lossy format to another, you will lose additional audio fidelity, and the diminished quality will likely start to become noticeable. Essentially, you are “throwing away” audio information twice by converting the files a second time.

Therefore, while it may not be necessary to re-rip your tracks from their original CDs, you may prefer to do so to ensure that you get the best quality files possible for whatever format and bit-rate you are using.

The second consideration is the reason why you may need to convert these files. If this is simply a matter of being able to listen to them in Windows Media Player, then an easier solution may be to simply get an additional codec plug-in for Windows Media Player that will allow it to play back your AAC tracks directly in Windows Media Player without having to convert them. Windows Media Player is highly extensible, and there are many plug-ins available that provide support for additional features and audio/video formats.

Several free codecs are available to support the AAC format in Windows Media Player, although we have had limited success with most of these, and they can often be complicated to install and get working properly. If you don’t mind paying a few dollars for a plug-in, the 3ivx MPEG-4 5.0.2 Decoder (http://www.3ivx.com, $6.95) is our recommended solution for this, and the price is very reasonable compared to the effort that you would put in converting or re-ripping all of your existing files.

Keep in mind, however, that this will only allow playback of these files within Windows Media Player itself. If you are looking to load your tracks onto a non-iPod player that does not support the AAC format directly, you will still need to either convert or re-rip them into MP3 format for that particular player.