My iPod Shuffle works without iTunes

How I got my groove back!
I hate iTunes, mainly because I don't understand it or because it just sucks. I'll never know because I have PURGED iTunes from my life.

Hallelujah!

Two things irritated me:
1) I had to copy my music files into iTunes library, then use iTunes to load my iPod Shuffle.
2) I had to individually choose each track, click, click, click. Hate, hate, hate.

Now I admit, maybe iTunes used some Apple way I may never know to mass select a group of files. I could choose all files. Or I could hold -CTRL- and select one at a time.
But now, I don't care because all that is behind me now.

First, I downloaded the Winamp plugin ml_iPod, and installed it.
It did not recognize my iPod Shuffle. After researching the problem, I learned that this is common. At this point I decided to remove iTunes from my system, using the 'Add/Remove Programs' window in the Control Panel.

The uninstall crashed, saying something about My Pictures directory contained a bad character. Well, I took the plunge and simply deleted the iTunes directory from Program Files. New problem: iTunesHelper.exe and iTunes???.DLL would not erase because the files were in use. No problem. I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up Windows Task Manager, and simply killed the processes. The files could now be deleted, and oh what a pleasure it was to clean my notebook of that wormy Apple ShitWare.

To my relief, Winamp (with the aformentioned plugin) regognized my iPod! Yay!
Finally I can simply transfer my music files to my iPod, or copy them from my iPod to my notebook. I have control!

As a sidenote, I can also now see my iPod as E: drive, which I never could before. In fact I can see that each of my music files is in it's own F0x directory:
E:\iPod_Control\Music\F00
E:\iPod_Control\Music\F01
E:\iPod_Control\Music\F02
E:\iPod_Control\Music\F03, etc.

What a lot of crap to go through to avoid iTunes, but definitely worth it.

iTunes takes control away from the owner of the iPod, and puts it in the hands of Apple & Big Music Inc, both of whom can kiss my ass!