Question about iPod
 

Been thinking of buying one, but I'm not sure it'd be worth it... unless it can double as a back-up hard drive for my PC files.

Can I plug the iPod directly into the USB 2.0 port on my laptop and see the hard drive and copy files to it?

Also, is there a way to secure the iPod with a password so if it's lost, anyone who finds it can't see the files on it?

yes you can do that, but I don't know about password. i use my 10 GB ipod to do backups and stuff when I am formatting my harddrive.

Thanks!

couldn't you use a third party utility to encrypt the files before you transfer them?

hell, even a .rar with password protection and encryption should do the job nicely.

You can use USB but for $30 you can add a firewire card which increases U/L and D/L speeds expotentially... ;)

USB 2.0 is comparable to Firewire speed.

that's what i did, local computer store had a firewire card on sale for $7.99, cheap deal, and i believe firewire is a tad faster, but probably not enough to really notice, unless you were trying to upload all 40gigs on a 40g iPod at once. i just opted for the firewire card cause it was cheaper than buying the $19.99 usb cable from apple.

but on topic, i don't believe there is a way to encrypt on the iPod. my guess is like others have said, encrypt the files before you move them to you iPod.

Another trick you might try is called steganography...which involves embedding a file inside another. You could "hide" your word docs pr0n pics whatever inside some mp3 files (which naturally would be found on an iPod) and anyone who sorted through them would just see the songs. If you want to hide or secure the songs themselves...well that's a different story.

As for FireWire vs USB 2.0...FireWire requires less CPU overhead to do its job (just like comparing SCSI vs IDE)...the faster the machine, the less difference you're likely to see. FireWire has a peak bandwidth of 400MB/sec, and USB 2 has a peak bandwidth of 480MB/sec...but you can usually expect higher _throughput_, especially when the system load is relatively high, with FireWire.

Apple has brought next-gen "FireWire 800" to market. Anyone know more about this?

i have a pc with both usb 2.0 and firewire, i stick with firewire just because i don't want to bother running out and getting the usb 2.0 cable. firewire's faster from what i've noticed, but not by any margin i would consider significant. it also sucks up more cpu overhead like Jolt said, but it's very very rare i'm ever going to transfer more than a gig or two of new music to my ipod.

it took a while to throw on 10gb at first, but ever since then i've only been throwing on a few new albums every now and then.

as far as security, the ipod doesn't have anything built in that would protect it, but think of it as just another hard drive. there's probably thousands of programs out there that will encrypt your files for you before throwing them on there. i wouldn't reccommend RAR or ZIP for anything mission-critical though. it may thwart a quick peak at it, but it's rediculously easy to get around. there are several programs out there that easily crack the pw from it. i believe it's the same with excel files.