Podcatchers?

GWC Community GWC Hive Mind
#1

I just got an eee PC (netbook) and my husband wants the ability to download our podcasts while we’re on vacation and suggested installing iTunes. We won’t need to update our music libraries, though, and I’ve read some really sketchy things about how poorly these netbooks handle iTunes. Since I don’t need all the functionality of iTunes, I thought maybe a basic podcatcher might do the trick. I’ve become really dependent on how well iTunes integrates with my ipod, however, and wouldn’t have the first idea of how to begin to a) find a podcatcher or b) use one with my ipod nano.

Help!

#2

I’m assuming this netbook runs windows?

#3

It does (we were talking about it before she bought it)

#4

Yes, XP Home.

#5

Technically, your netbook should be able to handle iTunes. One of my instructors also has a Eee PC, and I’m fairly sure I’ve seen the quicklaunch icon for iTunes on it. The real problem is that iPods don’t play nicely with multiple computers unless you turn to some workarounds. Fortunately, many of these workarounds aren’t that bad.

As a temporary solution (i.e. for the duration of your vacation) you could install Juice. Juice is a very nice podcast retrieval program that will run great on XP with very little system load. Then, you could use a third-party iPod manager to manually import the podcasts to your Nano. I’ve never used one of these myself, but I’ve heard good things about EphPod. Using this solution, your iPod likely be reverted to the state it was in before you left when you synchronize it on your primary computer again.

WinAmp will also synchronize with iPods and download podcasts, and it has a much smaller resource footprint than iTunes. If you go that route, though, you might have to reload all your current music onto the iPod since it might overwrite what’s on it right now.