iPod's organization with Classical Music

I bought myself an iPod NANO to play around with. It's my 3rd MP3 player after buying an Arcos 'Jukebox' 20 M player and a little Creative Lab's 512 Mb portable. I've had the Archos for several years and it's traveled well, though it's filled now. I use the Creative mostly when I bike or ski. It's light and portable and 512MB is enough to hold the entire Robert Greenburg lectures on the Symphony.

In both of these cases, I was able to take and construct m3u files containing the playlist order of the music and point them to the appropriate mp3 files, organized heirarchically on the player drive. One or two clicks and I'm off into my own world of music. No need for the FM radio, since most portable radios don't pick up the signal well enough to enjoy. Up in the mountains, forget classical music.

So I assumed the use of the iPod would be similar. Map the iPod directories, copy in the m3u and mp3s and keep Apple and me happy. It doesn't seem to work that way. I asked the young fellow at the Apple store and he said 'no problem'. Clearly he was not up-to-snuff, or else I didn't frame my question properly. Anyway, I'm on a quest to make it all work. Apparently m3u's from some Window's applications can be imported, but it sure isn't clear yet to me.