(2 of 2)
The movies have a memory of their own. I started watching a movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? on the MacBook then copied it to the iPod. When I queued it up on the iPod, it started exactly where I had left off on the MacBook. If you are going to watch movies on an iPod, Apple folks suggest that you turn off widescreen playback, to maximize the screen. But if you dock your iPod and plug into a TV, remember to switch it back.
The crazy thing about the 80GB iPod is that you can put even a sizable music collection on it in its entirety, and still have room for movies. The iTunes library itself has many new features, one of the most ambitious being that it adds artwork to music you may have ripped from CDs or downloaded from less legitimate sources. I found that the service worked well in most cases — even pulling up art for obscure albums in my collection like Midnight Star's 1983 No Parking on the Dance Floor — although it won't tag artists that haven't made deals with iTunes yet, like the Beatles and Dave Matthews Band. It's only available to people who have active iTunes accounts, and it's not 100% automatic. I recommend you switch to the album-art view, combing through and control-clicking on albums for which art might be available. I found that art was unavailable for some compilations and movie soundtracks, and in rare cases it loaded the wrong image. It is, of course, still possible for you to locate the album art on the web, say on Amazon.com, and then copy and paste it into the proper panel in iTunes.
The last new iPod feature appears on all models, from the tiny new iPod shuffle up to the 80GB warehouse of an iPod. I'm talking about the new earbuds. I have never been able to wear iPod buds before, having ears that just aren't predisposed to them. I switched from over-the-ear headphones, which are sonically unsatisfying, to in-ear buds like Shure's wildly expensive E series or Creative's slightly more affordable Zen Aurvana, but those require a suction-fit around the inside of your ear. Apple's new buds fit my ears without any fancy feats of physics, and for that I'm grateful.
While there's still plenty more I could say, the first thing iPod owners should do is download iTunes 7 and have a look at the new software. The new look and feel convey the broader options without sacrificing user-friendliness, and by spending some time just fiddling around, you'll learn quite a few things on your own.