Which format to use - mp3 vs. windows lossless,

I always advise people to go with lossless or completely uncompressed formats as hard drive space is cheap, and getting cheaper daily so space isn't really an issue. I keep my main music collection all in AIFF (I'm an Apple guy) and then use a second account of MP3's for iPod use. Seems to me if you are ever going to rip them in, you should do it in at least a lossless format as you can always have your computer convert them into another account as MP3 if you want and could spare yourself the torture of ripping in hundreds or thousands of CD's... Sure it will take your computer some time to convert the data, but it will be faster than ripping them all in again...

I don't know if there's an equivalent plug-in for iTunes on the PC but there's a free downloadable Applescript for the Mac called "Lossless to AAC Workflow" on dougsscipts.com that will convert Apple Lossless files on the fly for download to the iPod. Makes things a little less complicated if you want to keep only one, lossless library, but the synchronization takes more time.

Sfar: Media Monkey gold on the PC will convert on the fly to an IPOD for the PC, plus you can pull your music off an ipod! Great software compared to Itunes.. it also pulls album covers from Amazon.

Windows Lossless, IMO. While they are 3X the size, the price of a 500Gb external USB drive is under $200 now. That's the better part of 2000 CDs ripped in a lossless format and fully backed up for less than $400, and getting cheaper all the time.

Lossless format: FLAC encoded with EAC, tagged with Tag&Renamed. I like it because the tagging is quite convenient, and I use a slim devices squeezebox and a transporter which are converting internally to FLAC anyway (if you don't use FLAC you cannot use the fast forward function on the squeezebox)

I use another copy in MP3 for Ipod nano... and another in Apple lossless for 80gb Ipod