maddy,

Our children have iPods, and like them. They say that one of the things they enjoy is that they are in control of how they listen to their music.

After they import the tracks off of their CDs into iTunes (which is the music organizer program on their desktop computer [Wintel or Mac]) they reorganize the tracks any way they want into playlists. For example, they create their own “best of” by artist, genre, or mood. A playlist is like a virtual CD, and can be as long or as short as you wish.

So if you copy 25, 50, or 75 CDs into iTunes you can mix the order of your playlists to your tastes. If your tastes change, you can create new playlists which reflect how you want to listen to your music today.

Once you have prepared the playlists, you copy the playlist from iTunes on your computer to the iPod, and that is how the music is ordered. Of course, you can always jump from track to track within the playlist on the iPod.

Apple maintains a digital music and audiobook store where you can purchase music by the song, but my children don’t use it as you need a credit card.

My son also takes the time to annotate the tracks in iTunes, because that is included in the download from iTunes. There is also a calendar, but the children have never used it.

I don’t know much about the iPod shuffle.

Hope this helps!