1. Are you ripping in the format supported by the digital audio player you have purchased or will be purchasing?  Don’t waste all your time ripping your CDs to your Windows Media player if the device doesn’t support the WMA format.  Most players do, and let you know by the “Plays for Sure” logo, but some do not and you don’t need to fall into the “I wish I would’ve check first” category.

2. Is the info from your CD showing up automatically when you rip the CDs to your computer?  Compact discs contain codes that can be used by your audio software to go online and find the details for the music you are ripping.  This is important to you be able to find all your songs you want when you sync to your digital player.  You do not want the Bee Gees “Staying Alive” to showup as “Track 06” do you?

3. Are you organizing your musics into separate genres as you go?  You may be wasting your time in ripping your CDs to your PC if you are organizing the songs into genres by yourself, manually.  This will all be done automatically for you by the digital audio player you decide on or already have decided on, don’t waste time doing it yourself.

4. Do you have a specific way you want to listen to your music?  If you are of the type that does not mind if your Elton John comes after your Pantera then you are okay.  If you are of the type that does get mad by this sort of thing then you will need to create separate play list before syncing to your new digital audio player.

5. Enjoy!  You are ready to step into the big crowd of tech people with a portable musics collection.