WinAmp is a very good media player that includes a lot of built-in functionality. It’s easy to use, setup and manage, yet still has enough bells and whistles to satisfy many power users. And if the basic functionality isn’t enough for you, you can install plugins and customizable themes to tweak everything to your liking, try doing that with iTunes.

Using The Built-In iPod Portables Functionality

The Portables Interface (Including iPod functionality) was introduced in WinAmp 5.2, and provided an easy way to synchronize your music library with your iPod, and manage everything that you kept on your iPod and off your iPod by using two separate media libraries for what you have on your computer and what you have on your iPod.
iPod Portables Interface
WinAmp also supports:

  • iPod (Original, Shuffle, Nano & Classic, but not iTouch or iPhone)
  • Creative Nomad/Jukebox (Zen Micro, Neeon & Vision, MuVo, etc.)
  • Microsoft PlaysForSure (P4S-compatible devices)
  • Generic USB Players & Thumbdrives
  • Microsoft ActiveSync (Smartphone & Pocket PC)

To use your iPod with WinAmp all you have to do is plug in your iPod via USB, and go to the ‘Portables’ section on the left hand menu. After that you can sync, autofill, or play files directly from your iPod, by using the buttons on the bottom of your Media Library.

When you Sync with your iPod the Sync window will popup and it will show you exactly what will be transferring from you media library to your iPod, as well what songs are not in your media library that are on your iPod. You decide if you want to delete the songs, transfer them to your media library, or just leave the extra ones on your iPod. You can also allow your iPod to automatically sync when it is connected.

If you don’t want to Sync your entire music library, or just want to conserve room you can also manually send songs to your iPod by right clicking on the song and going to ‘Send to:’ then click on your Portable Device.

When transferring your songs to your iPod, you can view the trasnfers in the Transfer Queue screen and it tells what song is currently transferring, how much percent is left, as well as an estimated time til it is done transferring.

In addition to managing your music, you can also save and make playlists on your iPod as well as transfer any existing playlists in your media library over to your iPod.

Podcast Directory

WinAmp also has a podcast directory so you can easily find new podcasts, while managing your podcast subscriptions. You can also manually add podcast subscriptions if you know the address, and tell it to upgrade every week/day/month, as well as download new podcasts automatically.

ml_iPod Plugin

ml-iPod
Before WinAmp released it’s own software bundled into WinAmp to support iPods and portable devices, ml_iPod was a plugin that was used to incorporate iPod syncing, and functionality. It features many improvements and has been in development since 2003, whereas the WinAmp iPod functionality has only been in development since 2006. If you are using WinAmp to sync and manage your iPod I highly suggest that you get the ml_iPod plugin. Here is a comparison between ml_iPod and WinAmp’s iPod.
ml-iPod-Features
Among the most important differences is Audiobook support, video support, lyrics, repair iPod functions, iPod database management, formatting iPod, volume boost, Motorola smart phone support, last .fm support, and iPhone and iPod Touch support.

It’s easy to use your iPod with WinAmp, and it’s a better media player than iTunes, I’m not sure why more people don’t use WinAmp. It also has good functionality for all sorts of computer users, I once used iTunes, and now that I switched over to WinAmp, I’ll most likely never go back. If you haven’t tried out WinAmp yet, give it a test run, it’s free and you might like it.