Some last notes: Windows Media Player now freely supports encoding to MP3 from CD. Unfortunately, it uses the inferior Fraunhofer codec. iTunes, however, does not use the Fraunhofer codec. Despite some recent confusion, it turns out Apple wrote their own MP3 encoder for use in iTunes. Unfortunately its quality is much worse then their AAC encoder or other free MP3 encoders. Regardless, WMP does not support VBR encoding, and iTunes doesn't use LAME...