I agree with you about, if i have the songs on my ipod, why should I keep them on my computer. However, why are you trying so hard to burn the songs straight from the ipod to a cd, when you can burn the mp3's right from the computer? That's exactly what I did. I made all my playlists and then after I got done transferring the mp3's to the ipod, I then burnt them as files on a cd. Now, if i delete a song from the ipod or an album from the ipod, I just insert the cd that has the mp3's on it and just transfer them directly from the cd to the ipod. Further, if i had thought about it, If you burn the itunes file that is associated w/your playlists, im sure you can swap it back and forth without even have to recreate the playlist.