Thanks Wes!
When I helped my friend transfer all his music to his Laptop from his ipod, I just went to My Computer>Ipod, (select "view hidden folders") and under "Ipod Control" are all the songs. The only disadvantage about this is it takes a long time to transfer over, and the songs are named in a certain code (for example: 'W4AE') This is probably the most basic way for music transfer.
-Sam