For the Artist/Album thing, I'm going to do two things. First, I'm going to quote a post a made a while back about it, and then after I'll explain my usage so you can see where I'm coming from.
First, the quote-
Like many of you, I came here from Ephpod, looking for a way to better organize my whole collection and easily maintain my Ipod (10gig).
As such, I had two ways of putting files onto my Ipod in Ephpod- dragging entire albums/artists on, or making playlists in Winamp and dragging them on. At any given time, my content is a mix of the two. Additionally, I was very happy using Ephpod to make genre playlists, as well as using their auto-recently-imported playlist function. Further, when I import a new album onto my Ipod, I would frequently make that album a playlist so that I could easily access it the next day- I would have a rotating list of 5-10 album playlists that would go with the genre playlists.
Second, here's what I did last night in Ephpod-
-Opened up program, went to playlists. Deleted playlists of albums I didn't feel like having on there- it asks "do I want to also delete songs associated w/ playlist", I answer yes.
-Change over to my "rip" folder, for CD's I've ripped that day. Choose a few folders & drag them onto Ephpod screen- they auto import. Once they've imported, I right click on one song from each album and choose "make playlist from album". These albums are now listed on my playlists screen, and are easily accessible along w/ my custom playlists.
So, while I can navigate to any album by selecting "browse-artist-album", I can start playing certain albums I want to hear from the playlist screen- it's like highlighting the recent imports. While I understand that I could probably make a smartlist that would take recent CD's I've ripped and put them on the Ipod, I would rather pick and choose.
Again, sorry if this doesn't make sense.