IPod Nano 1GB should = 240 Songs?

Impossible to say with any accuracy since it will depend on the file size of anything stored on the iPod.

In my view, it's always best to go for the largest storage space you can afford because it's amazing how quickly it fills up.

What you probably need to do is convert all of your songs to the AAC format. To do that highlight all the songs in your itunes library and right click and select convert to AAC. You'll ave to delete the MPEG ones after that. Should use a lot less space.

there are a few possible problems:
1. You have songs with large sizes.
2.You have songs with high bit rates(320 kbps is the highest)..in which case you should convert them to AAC which has a 128 kbps bit rate
3. Some of your songs are in the apple lossless format, which take up 30 mb per file...again, convert them to AAC

Bear in mind that Apple quotes the number of songs you are able to store on any iPod by using the AAC format at a bitrate setting of 128kbps and for a 4 minute song.

Look in iTunes under edit/preferences/advanced/importing. What does it say in settings and import using? You may have the import settings and bitrate set wrong. You need to compress your music using either mp3 or aac. If you see AIFF, WAV or Apple Lossless then those formats are going to take way more space than mp3 or aac, especially the first 2 which are raw uncompressed formats.

See this article.

<a href="<a href="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60955">How much stuff will fit on my iPod?

And incidentally, a song of the same length, encoded at the same bitrate, gives an almost identical file size whether it be encoded in aac or mp3.

Where the space saving issue comes in is because many people say that if you encode a song at 128kbps in aac format, then the sound quality is as good as the same song encoded at 160 or 192kbps in mp3 format, therefor with aac you can lower the bitrate, get the same (or better ) quality, and store more songs on your iPod.

You can convert your original songs to a smaller bitrate by selecting one in the import options I mentioned earlier and then highlighting the songs in iTunes and selecting "convert songs" from the iTunes 'advanced' menu.

Wait! Don't do a convert on songs unless you are ok with the fact that this will diminish their quality quite a bit. If you convert MP3s to AAC (or any compressed, or 'lossy' format to another compressed format), you are taking a song that already had it's quality reduced from the CD version, then reducing the quality again. It's known as 'lossy to lossy.'

You'd get better quality tracks if you re-import from your CD originals, although it takes longer. You could always try a convert on one song and see if it sounds ok to you. I just tried it and it sounds alright to me, but I trashed my ears by standing next to loud speakers in nightclubs as a teenager! You may have better hearing.

Not sure why your reply is addressed to me since I don't want to convert my songs.

The original poster should try both methods before making a desicion. He may not have the Cds to hand to re import them.

Sound quality is very subjective from user to user.

How much room for songs would I have after loading 4 hrs of audiobooks? I'm buying nanos for the grandkids and am not sure if I should buy a 2gb or 4gb nano. The difference in price is $50/nano and, since this is their first one, it may get some hard use and not last a year.

Audiobooks can be imported at much lower quality than music, as they are just spoken word, so it's not noticable. But you'd have to know how to import them first. Have these books already been imported from CD (they may then not be in the best format), are they yet to be imported from CD or are they from audible or the iTunes store? If you let me know which, I can help you more.

If you know for sure that's all your grandchildren will need the iPods for, there is no sense in buying one with tonnes of storage. If they may want to use them for music or more audiobooks, then it would be worth the extra space.

If you have a lot of album artwork, it will take up space fast.

But if nano's with 1GB=240 songs and you don't have a lot of artwork on their, then why do minds only hold 175?

That depends in the "kbps" that the song have, my nano o f 1 gb can hold 275 songs