Overview

CopyTans Suite is a collection of utilities that allows you to manage your iPod / iPhone without the horribly bloated iTunes. It allows you to backup your iPod or iPhone to iTunes or a folder on your computer, easily transfer music, audiobooks, voice memos, and podcasts to your device. It Includes a photo sync application that works with older iPod models, and much more.

We previously covered CopyTrans Suite as part of our article 5 iTunes Alternatives, and here we’ll take a closer look at what the full suite has to offer.

Installation & Setup

Installing the Suite if pretty straight-forward following the wizard.

A connection wizard comes up to make sure your connected to the Internet. Unless you’re running through a Proxy you can just click on Test connection.

That’s all there is to it…successfully connection.

The CopyTrans Control Center opens and first we’re going to install CopyTrans 4 which allows you to transfer content on your iPod to you PC.

When installation is finished you’re resented with the following welcome screen which offers help getting started with CopyTrans.

Click on the Purchase –Activate tab then the Purchase now-Activate button.

Enter in the user name and license key then Activate…

Then the user interface will launch and you should see a message it’s safe to plug in your iPod.

One of the more interesting things we noticed when we plugged in our iPod Touch running iOS 4, we received the following error message. You’ll get this error is you don’t have iTunes installed already, which on our test system we didn’t.

You will need to download and install the CopyTrans Drivers Installer…which is really just installing a couple of component from the iTunes installer. The Automatic Install worked great and was less work than doing it manually. Keep in mind this will only install the minimum amount of Apple software on your PC for CopyTrans to work.

If you are interested in doing a manual install because you need Bonjour or something else, you might want to check out our post on Ed Bott’s guide to installing iTunes without the extra bloat.

The installer starts downloading only the components from iTunes that it needs.

You’ll see Apple Mobile Device Support…

And Apple Application support components installed…and that’s it!

To confirm what it installed, we went into Programs and Files and here you can see only the two are listed. This is pretty cool if you want the absolute minimum amount of iTunes software installed on your PC.

Download CopyTrans Drivers

Features & Use

To copy your iPod contents to your PC launch CopyTrans and select to backup to Folder. If you do have the complete version of iTunes already installed on your system you can copy the contents there too.

Select the folder and you want to backup your iPod contents too and click OK.

Then wait while the process completes. The amount of time it takes will depend on your hardware and the amount of data you’re backing up.

CopyTrans Manager

Another component in the suite is CopyTrans Manager which is completely free. This allows you to add music, videos, edit song tags and artwork, and create playlists…all without iTunes. It’s lighter on system resources and much faster than the full version of iTunes.

You can also listen to the music on your iPod with it’s mini Player while the device is plugged in.

You can listen to your music collection through your computer while your iPod is plugged in. However, once you eject it, you won’t be able to add songs or play them like you would in iTunes.

After you’ve added music, rated it, added playlists…etc. You can then update your iPod.

Then you can monitor the progress at the bottom of the UI.

CopyTrans Photo

The CopyTrans Photo utility allows you to manage pictures on your iPod and computer.

It’s compatible with all iPods with Photo capabilities except the 4th Gen Models and the iPhone. Although we were told that this should be updated in a future release.

Here we have it running with an iPod Touch 3rd Gen device.

CopyTrans Doctor

CopyTrans Doctor will repair an iPod by doing a disk diagnostic, repair hard drive memory issues, retrieve deleted iPod songs and more.

iLibs

This application allows you to manage multiple iTunes libraries easily. If you have several iPods, but only one computer in the house, it will make managing multiple user libraries. Of course to use iLibs you’ll need iTunes installed on your system.

iCloner

iCloner will create a full backup of your iPod and allow you to restore it if the worst happens. Unfortunately, it only works with older models of iPods, and not with an iPod Touch.

Performance

The performance of all the apps in the CopyTrans Suite is very good. It launches and works fast, and is very light on system resources compared to iTunes.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a faster way to manage your iPod(s) or iPhone without iTunes, CopyTrans definitely gets the job done. Just the fact that it will install only the minimum amount of Apple iTunes software on your PC is enough to make this a winner, let alone everything else it’s capable of. You still might iTunes installed for some functionality, but it’s nice to have the option to use it as little as possible. Whether you have a new, old, or multiple iPods, there is definitely something for everyone in CopyTrans Suite.

CopyTrans Manager is completely free while the other utilities in the suite vary in price. Also, a trial period is offered for each application in the suite and if you’re a Facebook friend you get 10% off.

• CopyTrans 4 – $19.99
• CopyTrans Photo – $29.99
• iLibs – $19.99
• iCloner – $19.99
• CopyTrans Doctor – $29.99

Works with XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit versions).

Download CopyTrans Suite

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