It’s open season on ITunes alternatives and I’m starting off with a review on a program called CopyTrans Manager which is of course completely free. I do love my iPod, but I truly hate ITunes with a passion and refuse to use it. So obviously it’s important that I have a full functioning alternative.
CopyTrans manager is a nice light weight bit of software, the initial setup file is 1.1mb (compared to the rather large 80mb ITunes setup file!) When you first load it up you’re presented with this screen:
You have a number of applications to choose from here, chances are you’re going to want the top one. The first bit of bad news is that you have to install ITunes to use CopyTrans manager, this is because iTunes installs the necessary drives for your iPod, and the good news is that you can uninstall it straight after!
The layout of CopyTrans manager is nice and simple without the bloated feeling of ITunes, at the top you have your Genres, Artists and Albums sections and the main centre section lists all your music when you click on either of those 3 (by default it will list all your iPods music)
Click thumbnail for full size picture
The simplicity of CopyTrans Manager is what makes it so good, at the end of the day most of us just want to stick music on our iPods, we don’t want any hassle we just want it to happen quickly and easily, and adding music on using CopyTrans Manager doesn’t get much simpler, you simply drag and drop files / folders from your computer to the main copy trans manager window, then simply click update and you’re done! Simple as pie.
If you want to edit a songs information (title, album, genre, artist etc etc) then simply right click it and chose edit, you will then get the tag editor pop up as follows:
Very straightforward as you can see. You can also create and edit playlists from within CopyTrans Manager, you simply drag and drop your music into the playlist and voila, you’re done!
It really doesn’t get much easier than this, in terms of functionality I’ve pretty much summed up everything that CopyTrans Manager can do, but as I said before this is a no nonsense piece of software that will allow you to add/delete music onto your iPod, nothing more nothing less. If your after bells, whistles and a whole load of other useless stuff that will paralyse your computer then go ahead and use ITunes, if not then give this a try!
You can download CopyTrans Manager from here
I’ve been using copytrans for over a year and it’s the BEST DAMN ALTERNATIVE to iTUNES, Copytrans provides simple steps in adding or erasing songs or videos to or from your ipod. But I wish we don;t have to pay for the Copytrans Photo, LOLL.