Use the Mac to play music stores on an old iPod shuffle

Nanos or shuffles are great for workouts at the gym or while running. You can use them just about anywhere. I personally use a Classic for my stuff, but the nano is great if you have a smaller library or want something very mobile.

As far as what you can do with it (other than playing music), it really depends on which generation you have. You obviously can't really run 'apps' on it, but many generations (of nanos) had some small games, radios, could play video, etc.

When iTunes shuffles through a playlist, library, or other list, it only will shuffle among items for which the "checkbox" column is checked. By default, this would include all the items in your library; only if you uncheck the box for a song would that remove it from the list of songs to shuffle.

It sounds as though your library is set up with all the songs unchecked. If no songs are checked to be included in shuffle, one gets the behavior you describe. The solution is to go to your library and make sure all your items are checked, not unchecked.