To save space on a shrinking hard drive, I keep none of my music on the computer, just the ipod. Occasionally I'll back up the iPod because otherwise all my music can go with a glitch in the firmware, or losing the iPod, etc. This is why I need iPod ripping software, which can extract from the iPod and onto an external drive.

This is the best genuinely free iPod access application I've tried, having tried many.

iPod Viewer: would always duplicate instead of skipping files when re-backing up (but was otherwise good)

Expod: was good but limited

iPod->Folder: had wrong progress reports, gave the songs four-character combinations and random folder allocation

Ollie's iPod Extractor: only extracts directly to iTunes

YamiPod: Not only does it copy quickly relative to others tried, but it also has a good level of customisation, I can copy them over as a load of songs, or categorised in Artist folders, categorised one deeper into Album folders, etc. And of course a vital function if you plan to back up again but not from scratch, just keeping the difference, there are options on how to respond to duplicate files.
It's simple, but at the same time has a host of options and functions, it works, and it's a nice clean interface.

I'll see how it compares to using iTunes, it has other built in functions such as a last.fm scrobbler and more.

I'm glad I kept looking, this was the application I needed to find.

Best app out there for getting music off your ipod and it does loads of other things too. Regularly updated and you can't beat the price. Big thanks to the developer(s).

Works beautifully.

I tried it hoping it would actually have cross-platforn function. Currently, using a 3G ipod formatted for windoze, yamipod is functioning on a WinXP desktop and a G4 powerbook. I may try it on Linux if I go totally wild.

iTunes (which has begun to suck for many other reasons) would not do anything crossplatform with my 3G. And, for those reviewers having problems with yamipod. My functioning Mac is now iTunes-free. One reason is that Apple is in the practice of sabotaging iPod copying software using malicious code within iTunes(see ipod-download).

Lastly, there are a few totally bearable eccentricities with this beta.
1)It has occasionally (rarely) sluggish playback,
2)Yamipod jumps to the front of other apps each time a new song begins to play (for a few seconds).
3)One must select before playing selected songs. Being an American, one might not know the meaning of "enqueue", or be willing to suffer this delayed gratification.

Great software. Yamipod is my ami.

Works fine with lyrics....however it only finds the songs about 80% of the time

This software is no good. It trashed my playlists on my iPod and iTunes can't access the iPod's contents anymore. Fortunately it did not trash the music that was on it. I backed it up with Carbon Copy Cloner. Now I have to reformat the iPod and reload all 5,000+ tunes as well as redo my playlists.

Thanks YamiPod!

I will never touch this again.