DarrylS

I am an analog guy who occasionally dips a toe in the digital world, often with mixed results. Last year my grandson and I did the limewire file share thing and caught a huge virus resulting the dreaded blue screen.

This year he is getting a sandisk 4 gb mp3 player?? Need some help from those more knowledgeable than I:

1. Can you download existing CD's to the MP3 player?
2. If he gets an itunes giftcard, can he use it and then use another service? Is the technology pretty much the same across the board??
3. Best Buy has a two month free trial to download stuff, how is this service.. need help, as somehow on Christmas Day he will want to do some stuff, so I need to know how to make it as simple and inexpensive as possible.

Thank you

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Michael

SanDisk doesn't play AAC so you can forget about iTunes Music Store. There are many applications that will convert the uncompressed AIFF files on his CDs to the compressed MP3 format for his MP3 player. I have never used any service except ITMS so I don't know how the Best Buy thing is. Nor have I read any reviews or heard from anyone who has used it.

Hope that helps.

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JoeSixPat

First of all, I'd encourage you to use the Live music archives at archive.org - free and legal music - all live, many of which are soundboard recordings - i.e. excellent quality.

Depending on your taste in music there's a ton there that's free and legal to keep you happy for years.

Regarding more mainstream music, my general advice is to be wary of the Limewire type files. I'd use a bit torrent program instead to see what you can get from there.

Its very easy to use. Dowload a free bit torrent program like Bit Lord.

Then I'd also suggest using another program called Peer Guardian - also free - which blocks known ISPs of companies that attempt to track IP addresses of those downloading copyrighted material. Peer Guardian I believe also works with Limewire type programs but I'm not 100% sure. In any event you simply check the p2p box on the peer guardian profile of what programs you want it to police.

You can just run peer guardian when running a bit torrent file sharing or limewire, but its not a big program so shouldn't be an issure regardless

To find the music itself, go to a site like Isohunt.com which is searches a number of bit torrent sites.

All you have to do then is click on the bit torrent you want to download, and you begin to fileshare with other people.

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JoeSixPat

One more note on Archive.org

Many files are available in mp3 format - others are in FLAC or .SHN format - both less lossy, or lossless formats - both can be converted to mp3 easilly with free software

But for the most part you should be able to find plenty of zip files of mp3s for bands

You'll probably not recognize most of the band names. Don't let that deter you. If you have a favorite genre or song, do a search for that song, see which live bands have it archived, and check out their other songs as well

I've found many new excellent bands that I'd otherwise never know of doing this - it's not the same commercial junk you hear on the radio - its much much better - and free, and legal

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JoeSixPat

Regarding existing CDs - I'd expect that the SansDisc software includes a CD "ripper" program that converts CDs to Mp3s for uploading.

I believe Windows Media can rip to Mp3

If not, try downloading a free program from another manufacturer like creative media source software - free from creative - it definately rips cds to mp3

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