bought my daughter a ipod touch for christmas and was told by my brother in law that if my comptuer crashes?

He is on mushrooms! Of course you can use it with other computers, the thing you got from the previous computer will be deleted but you can just re download them.

He's wrong. But there is a little truth in what he says, in that the songs on the iPod are a duplicate of the songs on the computer (the iTunes software on the computer handles this). So if the computer crashes and everything in iTunes is lost, then the only place those songs now exist is in the iPod, and if you just reinstall iTunes on a new computer, and reconnect the iPod, the contents of the iPod will be wiped out.

However, even if that happens, the iPod will still work fine, it just won't have the songs on it that it had originally; you will have to add new songs to it.

To avoid the above problem, make sure you back up your iTunes songs; iTunes has a backup feature in it.

This is definitely not true. I have had mine for about a year in a half now and have bought 2 new computers. I don't know where he heard that but there is nothing downloaded to an ipod that will make it stop working. If it does stop working it has NOTHING to do with the computer.

thats not true AT ALL.

if your computer crashes, the things wont go away. its the same as not having it plugged in to your computer.

and you can still use it with other computers, but it might lag if that computer already has another apple product on it (like two ipods)

No. You will only need to synchronize it to the new computer. (Mp3, apps, movies)

p.s. your brother-in-law is an idiot.