I discovered something Itunes does right. The Genius function is phenominal. It hasn't generated a bad playlist yet and has uncovered some great tracks that I haven't listened to in years.

I just don't like all these functions over connecting to the net in the background.

i havent tried the genius function yet after getting reports that it was quite lame. maybe i'll give it a crack

genius is rad. give it a try.

fuck genius, I put my question again, is there any alternative to load the ipod than with itunes?

yes.

floola.

thanks! though unfortunately their homepage has a problem at the moment. I keep it in mind.

There are tons, google ipod sync software or ipod transfer software, or ipod software. As long as your library structure is reasonably sane, they're all pretty much interchangible.

also songbird

Just switched to Songbird. Bye bye bloated iTunes. The Last.FM/Hype Machine integration rules.

I might have to give Songbird a go - iTunes drives me nuts with all the updates. Does Songbird let you share a library between computers? That's one of the new iTunes features I really like.

iTunes is annoying just because it is so slow and clunky. I click a button and wait for anything to happen. But, I haven't found anything better. Seems the other stuff is either really bare bones to get faster performance or it loads with a ton of features I will never use and is just as slow as iTunes. I like Sharepod OK, free and you can drop files on and off the iPod with ease. But, it doesn't handle playing back from playlists well and I miss the nice little feature where with iTunes, they skip the THE at the front of band names when alphabetizing. But, it does work well for a bare bones player and it lets you swap around files easily and doesn't take forever to load and respond. I still keep it around just for the file sharing ease. You load in onto the iPod itself so you can just plug your iPod into any machine and start it up and leave 'em with a bunch of your songs.