Now if our families would just quit buying us iTunes gift cards every xmas.

Wrinkle: new laptop is locked down (work machine) and I don't have admin rights to install damned near anything. Not mediamonkey, not itunes.

Windows Media Player, alllllright.

holy SHIT Windows Media Player sounds like a dirty rusty asshole. Tinny, thin, and no controls.

You're going to regret every bad thing you ever said about iTunes.

If you befriend tech support maybe they will allow you to install something usable.

They used to toss admin rights at you for 24 hours with a call, but I've heard they've clamped down hard.

oh shit, it isn't WMP, it's this laptop. Even youtube clips (good ones) sound shittyish. wtf?

get some headphones

...in headphones it sounds like shit, I mean. My regular headphones, same ones I've used for 4 years. There is almost no bass whatsoever. Plug them back in to the ipod, and it sounds like a dream by comparison. Dammit.

Get a USB drive. Load it up with software you like from this site: http://portableapps.com/
I use Foobar from my thumb drive since I am in a similar situation as you. (Also, you can get a last.fm plug in for it to scrobble.) I also run some other programs and have chrome set up. There are other media apps you can run from the drive. (Just install the apps from home and then run them from the drive on your machine at work.

There's always a way to beat the system.

(One time they shut down the ability to run .exe files off peripheral drives and that sucked, but then I just copied the USB drive files to my hard drive and ran them from the desktop.)

Cool - I have an external that's like 500 gigs or something, just bought it, and it has a copy of all my shit on it. I shall do this, and hope there's also a way around the headphone jack sounding like ballsack.

Audio problems?

I use something like this. I've got a usb hub hooked up to my work laptop with my keyboard, mouse, and this audio adapter plugged in which makes going home for the night much easier.

Another option would be an external sound card - but that is $$. I use a E-MU 0404 - but I dont think they make them anymore.

Also I use foobar2000. I don't know about the latest versions, but there are/were add-ons to control your ipod.

Ok so I've got to do this on another machine, and then somehow move it to a backup portable drive... gotcha. New Normal Music is nice but I want my files back.