Copying Music to a Non-Apple Portable Music Player

You can connect any brand of portable music player to your PC. Some portable music players have their own software to manage and transfer digital music between your PC and the player.

For example, the Creative Zen Micro player comes with the Creative Media Explorer software program. You can use this software to copy your music, or you can use Windows Media Player (WMP) to perform this task.

Most users will find Windows Media Player 11 to be the easiest way to transfer tunes from your Windows PC to a non-Apple portable music player.

You can manage all your PC's music with WMP, and then select which songs you want to copy to your portable player. Just follow these steps:

1. From within Windows Media Player, select the Sync tab.

2. Connect your portable music player.

3. Drag those songs you want to transfer onto the Sync pane (on the right).

4. Click the Start Sync button to transfer the selected files to your portable audio player.

Michael Miller is a writer and commentator on technology and digital lifestyle topics.