I have a new 160GB iPod Classic. I often listen to it for many hours at a time. Even with Itunes and the Classic set on shuffle it repeats songs often and only plays a small fraction of my songs. Help! of my

If you are listening on your Classic, forget about shuffle in iTunes, it is separate from the iPod.

How did you start Shuffle Songs playing? There are a couple of options: one is to select the Shuffle option on the Main Menu; the other is to go into the Settings menu and scroll down to Shuffle and press the select button so that it says Songs.

To eliminate possible causes of your issue, try using the Settings menu to turn Shuffle Songs on. Note that it's not "shuffle all songs". To have all songs playing in shuffle mode, turn on Shuffle in the Settings menu and then choose any song in the Songs menu to start. The Now Playing screen will show 1 of X in the dislay. X is the ttotal number of songs that will shuffle. Is that figure the same as the total number of songs on your iPod? Also, make sure the the Reopeat function is "off".

If you go into an album or the artists menu, or into a Playlist, and start a song form one of these places, you may end up playing only that one album, artist or Playlist in shuffle mode. If you also set repeat "on", then that list of songs will repeat forever. This sounds to me as though this is what you are doing.

Okay, well we've eliminated a couple of things.

One thing I have noticed about the iPod Classic: I suspect that "shuffle" is actually a Playlist, not a real shuffle. The Classic is not as powerful as iTunes or a desktop/computer, so it cannot truely "shuffle songs". I suspect what happens is that every Sync of the Classic with its iTunes Library causes a revised "shuffle playlist" to be put on the iPod and then, when you choose Shuffle play, it actually uses that special hidden "shuffle playlist".

So one trick is to Sync your iPod with iTunes frequently. This would change the "shuffle playlist". Another trick would be to create your own Playlists, either by adding what you want to a Regular Playlist or by creating a Smart Playlist which adds and removes songs by itself.

Smart Playlists: for example, you can create a Smart Playlist (in iTunes) which contains a random selection of all songs, or a random selection of a particular group of songs, provided the song has not been played for a period of time, say six months, or 300 days. Every Sync of the iPod with iTunes would remove any song from that Smart Playlist if it has been played. That same song cannot go back into the Playlist for a period of six months, or whatever you choose.

This way, you can reduce the likelyhood of hearing the same songs too often. This brings me to another point. If you have the same song, on different albums, then it's possible that you are hearing that same song but from both albums.

Try this: in your iTunes Library,

look for and click on the big + button and choose New Smart Playlist..., if you do not have the Sidebar displayed, switch to the Playlists view where you will find it in the bottom left corner,

Set it up to look like this:

It creates a list of songs that have not been played for fifteen weeks. It excludes videos and in my iTunes Library, it has 527 songs in it. If you would like a smaller list than that, click on the Limit to and fill in the number of songs you want.

Having set it up, play some songs from it (in shuffle mode if you wish) and watch how it changes . The song must play through to the end of the track before it is classed as "played". If you like it, let it go onto your iPod. You could set up a few Playlists, each with their own rules. Even if a song appears in two different Smart Playlists, if you have the "last played is not in the last" rule in both lists, then playing the song will eliminate it from both lists. None of this removes songs from the iPod (unless you use Sync selected Playlists...).