I want to get the music off of my old mini ipod onto my new PC. Is there a safe way to do this?
The safest way, of course, is to remember your music officially “lives” on the PC and not the iPod. If the old computer is gone you might have trouble de-authorizing it. I found this out after wiping my old laptop and copying my files to the new computer. 
Anyway, there are several free or near-free utilities out there that you can use to bring the files down from your iPod. If you have any purchased songs on there, you’ll have to deal with the authorization thing with the iTunes store. Unfortunately I haven’t used any such products in long enough that I can’t remember their names, and better ones may be out there now.
BTW, the iPod works as a poor-man’s backup of your “official” music files, but you really should have a backup separate from the iPod as well. I finally have mine up to date…
I just found this out too. My computer was basically put to a hault by a nasty virus, so I had to format my hd and re-install XP. Went to try and put my music from my iPod to my computer again… doesn’t work! Good thing I made backups, and I highly recommend it in case of an emergency.