How to load my new MP3 player from CD's

[razz]

It seems that everyone except me knows how to do load and use an MP3 player. I finally broke down and bought one for the hour-long trips that I take on transit periodically. It might also be fun when I am walking or meandering with the dog.

I have done a search to find out how to load this HS636-4GB including its www.hipstreetonline.com site and am having some difficulties understanding.

What I would like to do is load some of my lectures which are on CD's onto the MP3 player plus some music that is also on my CD's. I can run the CD's on my Window 7 laptop and the MP3 is attached to the laptop's USB.

What I am understanding at present is that I have to load the CD's to the laptop's memory and then load the memory to the MP3 player. Is that correct?

How do I load the CD's to the laptop's hard drive though? Is there an easier way?

What is an e-book for the MP3 player? Where would I get these? Are there any free downloads of EBooks to try?

TIA

[Tradd]

Do you have a CD drive on your computer? If so, just insert the CD into the CD drive. A message may pop up asking if you want to burn the CD to your computer. (I have a Mac, so I don't remember how it is on Windows machines). You can burn the whole thing, or just choose certain tracks. Once you've burned the CD to your computer, attach mp3 player to computer with USB cable. mp3 player will show up on your desktop as an external drive. Go to wherever the burned CD was saved, highlight tracks you want to move to mp3 player, and simply drag and drop them into the mp3 icon on your desktop.

By eBooks, I think you mean AUDIO books. Not sure where you would get FREE audio books. You might try your library.

You HAVE to load CDs to your computer's hard drive. No other way. The only other way to get music/podcasts onto an mp3 player is to download them from online - such as buying music from Amazon.com or downloading a free NPR podcast, for example.

[H-work]

Like Tradd said, you mean audio books. Free ones can be checked out online from your library or you can get public domain titles (out of copyright, so mostly things like the classics) here: http://librivox.org/

eBooks are ones that you read, like on a cell phone screen or on a kindle. Audio books are ones that you listen to. Audio books take up a lot of memory on a mp3 player, so you may not be able to fit a whole book onto your mp3 player, especially if you also want to keep some music on it. But that's okay, you can load a few chapters on at a time. Just delete the chapters you've listened to and add more chapters when you get home.

Hope that helps :)

[Miss Cellane]

Well, I found the manual for your MP3 player and it is pretty bare bones instructions.

What you will need to do is copy the lectures that you want onto your hard drive. You need to make sure that you copy them as MP3 files or as WMA files. I don't know what software you have on your computer--I have a Mac and can't help much with Windows. I do know that Apple makes a Windows version of iTunes and it's a free download. ITunes will copy your CDs and make the files. You can then select the files in iTunes that you want to load onto the MP3 player. You can also use iTunes to access the iTunes store and buy new music for download, bypassing the whole business of copying from CDs. There's other software out there that can do the same things; I'm just not familiar with what's available for Windows.

The "Ebooks" your manual refers to are text files. However, if you can find audio books in MP3 or WMA files, they should play perfectly well on your MP3 player.

[Alan]

On a Windows machine, use Windows Media Player to rip music or audio from a CD to your hard drive. Then connect your MP3 player to the computer, which will see the MP3 player as an external drive, and copy the files to the player.

[Tradd]

Well, I found the manual for your MP3 player and it is pretty bare bones instructions.

What you will need to do is copy the lectures that you want onto your hard drive. You need to make sure that you copy them as MP3 files or as WMA files. I don't know what software you have on your computer--I have a Mac and can't help much with Windows. I do know that Apple makes a Windows version of iTunes and it's a free download. ITunes will copy your CDs and make the files. You can then select the files in iTunes that you want to load onto the MP3 player. You can also use iTunes to access the iTunes store and buy new music for download, bypassing the whole business of copying from CDs. There's other software out there that can do the same things; I'm just not familiar with what's available for Windows.

The "Ebooks" your manual refers to are text files. However, if you can find audio books in MP3 or WMA files, they should play perfectly well on your MP3 player.

If I'm not mistaken, iTunes will *only* work with iPods, the mp3 players made by Apple. So iTunes is worthless unless you have an iPod.