Ipod - a simple question from a thickie

Here's the thing.

I have an ipod full of wonderful music. I have been using an old laptop to store my itunes stuff.

I know want to switch to a new laptop. How do I do this without losing all of my music?

I am too embarrassed to ask my 16 yr old son...

I've done this recently Barkles.  basically you need to copy the music library in the itunes folder on the old laptop onto something like a USB drive and then copy that into the same folder on the new laptop (after setting up iTunes of course)

if you google it - you'll find the precise instructions to follow.  the copying can take a time, depending on the folder size, so be prepared to be patient or just let it run overnight like I did.

Cool. Thanks mate

and don't forget to deauthorize the old computer in your itunes account settings after setting up the new one.  if you don't then it will reduce the number of pcs you can have authorized to your account which is limited to 5.  with work/laptops/ipad etc then you can quickly reach 5!

and I've just done a quick google to check how to do it and there are a few different methods - more than I thought!!  read this - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527.  

Is your old laptop Windows xp.

If so then everthing is probably stored under c:\documents & setting\yourusername\my documents\my music\itunes\

So install the latest itunes on your old laptop just because it's easiest when it's got the latest version.  Then copy all of the itunes directory onto said memory stick or external harddrive

Then on the new windows 7 laptop install the latest itunes. Then goto c:\users\username\my music\ check there is an itunes directory, and then just replace it with the directory from your old laptop.

One other thing.  In case your tunes are not all in the one place you should ideally on your old laptop tell it to consolidate the library which copies the files all into the one directory in case they are stored in different locations.  If they are in weird places then the odd song might be missing on the new laptop, the consolidation takes care of this.

Thanks guys