I may be guilty of mis-stating.

MP3 files will be compatible across systems.

The connection software running on the iPod is operating system 
(Windows or MacOS) specific, and to switch over from one system to the 
other requires reinstalling that software on the iPod. (simple, but not 
something visitors will want to do since it will erase the existing 
contents of their iPod.)

The internet downloading solution is much less problematic for the 
museum.

-Kevin


On Apr 12, 2006, at 9:08 PM, Kevin Coffee wrote:

> Hi Martin,
>
> I believe you've been misinformed about connecting iPods to multiple 
> computers. ipods have no such limits, and are useful portable storage 
> devices for that reason.
>
> There is an issue with the fact that the file systems used by the 
> Windows and the MacOS versions of the iPod software are not 
> cross-compatible, however, and so users with one system would not be 
> able to download files stored on a machine running the other operating 
> system. (to address the original posting)
>
> perhaps the confusion is with the music downloads from the 'itunes' 
> store and limits imposed on transferring those purchased music files 
> between computers. As I understand it, there is a copyright protection 
> scheme encoded into those files which limits the number of times they 
> can be copied back and forth.
>
> Obviously that is specific to those files sold from the itunes store, 
> and not all audio files encoded in one of the several audio formats 
> that are playable on an ipod.
>
> regards,
> Kevin
>
>
> On Apr 12, 2006, at 5:43 PM, martin weiss wrote:
>
>> 	Interesting idea that seems to spreading. One problem for offering 
>> the tours to folks who come to the museum is for Mac iPods; Apple 
>> limits the number of computers any one iPod can connect with in order 
>> to download files. I think it is four but it maybe fewer. I am not 
>> certain. There is a hack to overcome this but I am not certain the 
>> Kansas Museum of Natural History wants to be associated with hacking 
>> since Apple is limiting the spread or sharing of music that they sell 
>> via iTunes in this manner. Another way of delivering audio tours with 
>> visitor-familiar-instruments is use of  cell phones. You could find 
>> institutions experimenting with this via Google. I saw an article 
>> recently, I think, in the LA Times.
>>
>> Martin

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