If you’re already a computer whiz,
or a teenager, forget this. But if you’re
an idiot like me:
Step one:
Click here and download
Apple’s free iTunes software. I’ve
put it on my IBM Thinkpad. Free!
Step two: Copy
all your CDs onto your computer. (So
long as they’re your CDs, you’re not violating anyone’s copyright.)
[To make this easy, once you
have iTunes installed and running, choose the option that
automatically copies a CD to the iTunes library when
you insert it ... and ejects it when it’s done, ready for the next. This is great, because it happens in the
background while you’re using the computer to do your expense account. To set this option, select Preferences from the iTunes EDIT menu and then – on the GENERAL preferences tab –
select “Import Songs and Eject” from the pull down menu.]
Step three:
If nothing else, you now have a copy of your entire CD collection on your
computer. To hear something you like,
just click and it plays while you’re doing your e-mail. This can be easier than going to the living
room to find the CD. And if you’re in a
hotel room in Delhi, or in a deli near your hotel – or away for the
weekend at your summer place – you can listen to any of your CDs without
actually having had to take them with you.
Thus endeth the free steps. But if you do
no more than this, it could be fun. With
most CDs, iTunes automatically enters the Composer, Song
Title, Album Title, Genre, and more, allowing you to search in lots of ways, rank
the songs, create play-lists, and more.
Step four: Go crazy.
Blow 99 cents on some favorite song or snippet of classical music
you love but don’t have handy. A click from
iTunes takes you to Apple’s on-line music store. Another few clicks finds
the song. And – except for the couple of
minutes it takes the first time to sign up for an account – it’s yours faster
than Merlin can say magic. Albums are
typically $9.99, cheaper than most CDs. And, yes, if your computer has a CD read/write
drive, you can make a hard copy (for your own use).
Step five: If you don’t already have good speakers for
your computer, click here
to buy a pair. They are from Bose, designed for this purpose, $99 for the pair.
Merry Christmas!
Step six: If you’ve been really good this year, ask
Santa to bring you an iPod. Or wait a few months – tease yourself
with giddy anticipation – and buy one after the prices come down a bit
more. There’s no guarantee that they
will, of course, but with Dell jumping into the market with a 20GB competitor
that’s already $100 cheaper than Apple’s 20GB iPod,
at $299, I’d expect so.
(Right now, a 10 gigabyte Apple
iPod will cost just under $300 and hold about 2,500
songs. For another $100, you double the
memory. For another $100, you double it again – 40GB, or 10,000 songs.)
An iPod is about the
size of a deck of cards and, once you get the hang of it, is amazing. All your CDs fit on this one deck of cards,
which fits in your shirt pocket as you walk around the supermarket or pound the
treadmill or drive to the mountains.
It knows the time and date,
so you can use the “sleep” feature to fall asleep with it and then wake to the
music of your choice with its alarm.
It lets you download books
from Audible.com. Regular readers will know I am a big fan
(and, full disclosure, a shareholder). I’m
currently reading Walter Isaacson’s biography
of Ben Franklin – Franklin would have been delighted
by the iPod.
I think iPod
lets you keep your calendar on it and copy big files onto it (I’m still on page
1 of the user’s guide, so don’t hold me to this part).
And there’s an add-on you can
buy that lets you use it as a tape recorder, for time-stamped memos or interviews
for later playback.
Another option lets you offload
and store photos from your digital camera.
The Dell competitor may be
easier than the iPod to hook to a PC (I don’t know),
but the only real challenge I had with my iPod was in
upgrading my Thinkpad from its old inadequate USB
ports to the newer, 40-times-faster USB2 slots.
This seems best done NOT with the $109 PCMCIA card IBM sells, with its
clumsy dongle (don’t ask; it’s clumsy and it’s a dongle) but with this $30 card or this $36 card from
newegg.com that requires no dongle and
works just fine. (The cheapest iPod will require a $19 USB2 connector; the more capacious
models don’t need it.)
Step seven: Consider – with all the usual caveats that
this is very risky and the general level of the market is high here and you
really, really could lose your money – buying a few shares of Apple stock. Or, if we get lucky and it drops a point or two or three, the
Apple 20 January 2005 LEAPs.
LEAPs are long-term options. These LEAPs (symbol
ZAAAD) currently cost about $420 each and give you the right to buy 100 shares
of Apple – which closed last night at $21.15 – at $20 per share any time before mid-January, 2005. (Last week, with Apple a point lower, each
LEAP was only $360.)
This is obviously risky, but
let’s say you were able to buy 8 of them for $3,000 and Apple stock did
poorly and you lost the full $3,000, which in your federal-and-state tax bracket
actually cost you $2,000 (because the first $3,000 in losses can be used to
lower your taxable income).
OK – them’s
the breaks.
But what if, a little more
than a year from now, Apple were $38?
I am absolutely not predicting
that. But I do think Apple is a
great brand, an innovative company with no debt and a loyal following . . . and
it was so easy to click just now and buy Peter Paul & Mary’s Album 1700 for
$9.99. If that happened – and I truly, truly am not predicting it, and would
have no credentials to do so even if I were
predicting it – your 8 options would allow you to buy 800 shares at 20 and,
simultaneously, sell them at 38, for an $11,400 profit on your $3,000
investment, turning that $3,000 into $14,400 . . . or about $12,750 after the long-term capital gains tax you would owe.
Well, I’m getting carried
away. Start with steps one through three
for now. I can’t get in too much trouble
with those. [Thanks to the estimable Tom Rielly and the estimable Bryan Norcross for teaching me about things like iPods and dongles.]