I started ripping my CD collection to disk. I'm using EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to do the extraction and FLAC to do the compression. The combo seems like the current way to go for anal-rententive folks. EAC does a very good job of dealing with scratched CDs, and FLAC, being a lossless compressor, ensures perfect quality encoded files. Sure it chews up a ton of disk, but storage is so cheap, who cares? My machine is fast enough that it should be no big thang to re-rip to MP3 for use on portable devices when necessary.