Question.

The reason I was in the parking lot pictured in the last post is that the fan on my personal laptop seized, causing it to power off every five minutes. Now that won't do. It had to be sent out for service to be returned to me in four weeks, at which time I will be across an ocean and a continent. So -- new computer!!!

My question, like the last post, is quite serious. My music library for a software program I won't name because I don't want Google dumping people off here, but you know the one I'm talking about, it starts with an 'i' and is not a Magnetic Fields album. Anyhow. All of my music files are saved on an external hard drive. But the .itl and .xml files for the library are obviously still on the laptop drive in danger of melting down. I could proceed one of two ways:

1. Install the program, set music library as the external hard drive folder, add folder. This way is quick and painless (indeed I have already done it, so desperate am I to kill the quiet in my room), but it does not preserve play lists, play counts, or ratings.

2. Uninstall and reinstall the program, use a shareware program to grab my music from my portable music player, delete external hard drive folder, replace with newly uploaded folder. Less quick and less painless, and if I recall correctly from having done this once before, the folder and file names are not very pretty. But it does preserve play lists, play counts, and ratings.

My question boils down to: just how important are those three things?