AIFF vs Apple Lossless Ripping

AAC is compressed like MP3 (but better sound quailty).  WAV doesn't have ability to store metadata (track names etc.).  AIFF shouldn't have any options, being uncompressed.  Your choice is between Apple Lossless (ALAC) and AIFF.  ALAC is about 50% smaller than AIFF.  I store everything in ALAC because I use Apple computer and Iunes, but also because my wireless streaming to Airport Express uses ALAC as format (avoiding additional conversion).  Be advised, that ALAC and AAC files have the same extension .mp4  and the only way to distinguish between the is to read file info in I tunes or compare the size (AAC will be many time smaller).  On my phone and in my car I use AAC 256kbs VBR.

So, if I wanted to I can click box to load iPod at 128k for car trips?

while the actual music stored is in Apple lossless ???  

I will ill rip everything again I at Apple lossless from now on.  Thank yo u

Once you have it in Itunes in one format, like ALAC, you can export album to another format like ACC.  It will perform conversion for you. Once you set export format in options it might be even possible to do this by dragging album icon to desired directory, but I'm not sure.  I use 256kbps for headphones. Same for car because I reuse the same files.

Eventually I will have all my music on a hard drive, and use an apple laptop with hard drive connected to my preamp for playback.  

Is is this configuration possibly hooked up by rca's ???

Or maybe buy the 1tb iPod and use that as well via the 30 pin jack to rca's to preamp