You're better than me then. For some reason I have a knack for locking mine ipod up. My 17 year old showed me how to unlock it though.

 

If it wasn't for kids, most of us would never be able to watch TV or use a DVD player.

 

Every CD in my 6 CD changer was copied in MP3 format. They work great and you can carry so many more songs with little worry of them being damaged in a case in the back seat. Also, I never carry my original CDs with me anymore. I accidentally left one I really liked in a rental car so I always make copies now.

 

So, what I get is about the same file size as the wma when using 128 bite rate.
Now my original 145 song wma cd is a 145 song mp3 cd. Just one minor, or not, thing that can be irritating is that the song title also lists what song number it was on the original album that it was copied from. What that does, if you copy a couple of complete albums, is that you will first hear all the songs that were track one before you hear track number two and so on. In a way it is okay as that way you don't have to shuffle. The irritating part is that you can't just listen to a complete album from beginning to end, unless you manually edit the play list before you copy the songs to cd. It just takes time is all. And no, you don't want to copy the folders to the cd, it won't work like that. Still is better than shelling out the extra money for an ipod. And, being of mp3 format, if it is stolen, can only be played on a mp3 player.

 

Nero should be able to save your files as either WMA or MP3, your choice. Windows Media Player will also save as MP3, check your settings.

 

I'm still a newbie at doing mp3 cd's for when I get my SS with the mp3/cd player. Plus I'm using freebie mp3 converters. Windows media Player and, I'm not sure, but I think Nero has you pay for a converter. Anyway, I use media player to convert cda to wma, the freebie to convert to mp3 and nero to copy the converted mp3's to cd. I guess that is the long way for making an mp3 cd. I compile the songs I want on the cd into a temporary folder and just copy all the tracks on the fly. Just to clarify, I have almost all of my cd's copied to an external drive using media player which sorts all the albums and what not and then select what I what and copy to a temp folder. Then from this temp folder, I copy the wma files to still another temp folder using the mp3 converter. Then, using nero, i just copy all the contents of this last temp folder to a blank cd. All the time I'm looking at total disk space used and work to get 700mb in the folder before doing the final copy to the cd. It sounds long and tedious but it really isn't. The hard part was copying all my cd's to my hard drive. I guess once I get to use nero some more I might figure an easier way.

 

Try the old Music Match free software. This is what I always use to convert cds to mp3s. You can choose what info you want and will not put the track number in with the title.
http://www.download-it-free.com/musicmatch/

 

Yeah, 145 songs= 12 hours. Only one bad tune that didn't convert to mp3 format properly somehow. It is an old Ozzy tune from Diary of a Madman. The song is "You Can't Kill Rock and Roll". Windows Media Player came up with an error message saying I needed an additional plug-in in order to play it. So, I guess if media player won't play it the mp3/cd player in the HHR won't play it. I guess I need to burn another cd. Maybe a Skynyrd tune to replace Ozzy. Anyways need a 7 minute filler. That's how long the Ozzy song was. Maybe two tunes, "That Smell" and "Gimme Three Steps". Got to check run times.

 

Just took a look at the rip options and I found it, thanks. I'll give it a try when I get around to copying more of my collection to the external drive.

 

I've started making Rock mix mp3 cds now that my 3 months of XM ran out. I only ever listened to 46 & 49 and they just played the same couple hundred songs over anyway, so this works good.