Ipod Nano troubles

So being the best son on the planet I thought buying my mom an Ipod would be a nice gesture…picked up the 8gb nano and had no issues.

Then it decided it didnt want to power on anymore…no problem…had warranty…got new one.

New one will not sync with computer to load songs.

I don’t own an MP3 player because I like cassettes so can anyone help me out?

Windows or a Mac?

Firmware update available?

Stupid question… but can you do that with two ipods? as in having the 2 ipods sync to the same library… try not syncing it… and just dragging the music from the library to the ipod

Windows vista

No idea about updates as i downloaded the version of itunes to their home pc about a week ago…so I am assuming its the most current.