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[rva]

What do you mean by "use iTunes?" 

If you have purchased songs via iTunes store, they may be DRM so you can't play them on non-Apple equipment.

If you use iTunes to sync your songs, you will have to find some other software to do your syncing.  But there is plenty of non-itunes software that will automatically sync your itunes folder (and/or any other folder you wish) to your device.

Or you can just drag and drop files.  Most mp3 players nowadays just plug into your machine and are seen as an extra disk drive.  Just like if you had a USB jumpdrive.  So all you have to do is use regular windows and drag and drop your music folders like you normally do.  You can even *gasp* see exactly what's on your mp3 player and browse through the directories.  Which is something Dan could use right about now.

You can continue to use iTunes on your PC or laptop just like you normally do.

You will have to use whatever app or software is available on your device, and it won't be iTunes.  So it may not look as good or be as easy to use as iPod.  But it's not like you won't be able to sync to your iTunes folder or play your songs (unless they are iTunes Store purchases with DRM).  It just might be a little annoying is all.

[vizzah]

Gotchya. Sorry I wasn't more specific, but you still answered my question.  I really don't even know what the fuck "syncing" means, to be perfectly honest.  I've had itunes for 5+ years, so you'd think I would, but I don't. I just do what I need to do and don't pay attention to technical details. 
 I just wanted to know if loading my files onto a non-ipod mp3 player is going to be complicated. 

[Ella Minnow Pea]

Basically, as long as your files are MP3 files, you should be good to go - but you can't use iTunes to copy them to the player. If they are in a different format, then you may have to be more selective in which portable music player you get.

[Dan]

I've done a little web searching, and it sounds like there are two solutions.

1) do a restore of the phone. I'm not sure what this requires of me and would prefer not to do so.

2) Some user comments suggested "goto settings/ safari and clear history, cookies and cache" I will definitely try this at home tonight. I found that idea below this article:
http://www.iphonefaq.org/archives/97281

It sounds like "other" should take up 300 MB, which is a lot better than the (currently) 1.45 GB that it is consuming. And some of those users had 4 GB or even 7GB, so clearly this is something that should be rectified by Apple. If it's as simple as your clearing your cache they should at least make this solution more publicized.

I hope it works.

Intarwebs FAIL.
It reduced my "other" from 1.45 GB to 1.38 GB, so that's nice, but it still doesn't solve the problem. I mean, it makes no sense that I have to continuously delete music off my device just so I can have the same amount of space. In 6 months, it will be taking up 2 or 3 GBs, and that's bull.

Of course, I haven't done the full restore yet, either.

[rva]

I'm sorry. man.  Not being able to browse the folders on your hard drive is just fucking stupid. 

Try downloading this:
http://www.macroplant.com/iphoneexplorer/

[Nate]

So I bought itunes match and wanted to share my user experiences...

-It took about 18 hours, I'd guess to scan my library and upload the songs itunes didn't have.  I let it run overnight and checked on it in the morning.  I have a library of a little less than 14,000 songs.

-Now I'm starting in on upgrading the low-bit rate tracks (anything less than 160kbps that wasn't already uploaded to itunes).  Yeesh.  This will take a while.  I think there was about 2000 of these.  I think if I get ambitious, I'm going to start in on anything less than 192kbps, though this will be about half my library.  This'll be a project over the next month or so. 

-The process itself is pretty easy after the initial scan is done.  Just delete a matched track from your library, and hit the cloud icon to re-download it at 256 kbps.

-However, there are some flaws.  On two albums in particular (Green Day's 'American Idiot' and the essential Black Crowes's 'Southern Harmony and Musical Companion' I had ripped at 160 AAC back in the day.  Some of the tracks did not get matched to itunes, but were uploaded instead.  I have no idea why this happened.  I'm hoping glitches like these will be fixed in a software update (also when I hold down the scroll button, it stops automatically after three or so songs).  I hate the idea of re-ripping those CDs (this is why I liked the idea of itunes match in the first place).

Anyone else have any experiences to share?

[rva]

I haven't done it, but now maybe I will.

That actually sounds like it went pretty smooth.  You're moving an assload of data, so 18 hours is actually pretty fast.  I think it took me over two weeks to get all my stuff moved in lala's people mover back in the day, although I don't think I left it running straight overnight.

I'd also say only losing two albums is pretty good.  When you rip stuff, who knows what gets put into the ID3 tag?  Like usually they'll pull it off of Gracenote or something, but what if Gracenote has an error, and then later they fixed it so what you have is not what Apple has.  Or somewhere along the line you accidentally changed a tag, or some data glitch scrambled something.  I mean, the vast majority of the time it works, but there's always a big of leakage.