if older versions happen to work with ME (even if they're not supported) filehippo.com keeps old versions of itunes for download apparently

Download iTunes - filehippo.com all the older versions are on the right

Thanks for all the information. I am so forehead-slappy when it comes to this shit.

I do have a friend who says he can give me Windows XP. Y'think maybe that's the best option?

And uhhh... so once I get the thing, it looks like the boy-part it comes with to connect it to my computer wants to go in the girl-part that I use to connect to the internet... can I buy like an adaptor that has two girl-parts for less than half my life savings? Otherwise I suppose they can just take turns.

hahah - thats a very good description

Yes, you can get a USB hub pretty cheaply.
You only have one connection?

Easiest solution for that is to buy an external (powered) usb hub.

Best solution is to get a usb internal PCI card.

WinXP is a fine solution, but you need to make sure the pc is up to it, and do a fresh install - not an upgrade.
Most ppls see this as quite a job though.

I take it you mean the usb port? You should be able to get a usb hub to give you more usb 'girl parts' to put the 'boy parts' in, and they're not terribly expensive but it depends on what you need. I doubt you'll need to spend more than $20 for your needs, going on the prices we have here in the UK. Maybe they're cheaper there, most things are.

As for your friend's copy of XP, I think microsoft are way fussy about unregistered copies, etc, so you might have problems with it unless you've got a valid unused serial/key for it. I don't know much about all that though, and there are probably ways around it, maybe Mike can advise. What I do know is that you might not be able to get windows updates on an unregistered copy of XP, and so unless the copy of XP you're being offered is fairly recent (so comes with service pack 2, I think?), you might run into overall computer problems, that I'm too much of a novice to specify. Just talking pretty general.

It's worth checking your machine has the hardware capable of supporting XP as well, I don't know quite what XP requires but I'm going to hazard a guess that it'll be more than ME. Check your hard drive, RAM, processor, perhaps? Again, bit of a rookie here and maybe it's gonna be okay, but it's worth checking?

Edit: haha, Mike managed to beat me to it on all counts, and with fewer words.

Oh me oh my, I'm getting overwhelmed. I just wanted a pod!

Maybe what I should really do is use the nice fast XP-tastic computers at school to put music on my ipod until I'm feeling very calm and patient about whatever it is my computer is going to need in order to get involved.