So I weakened and got an mp3 player, the Sony NWD-B105, on Pumpe's recommendation.
Very... very... (help me out with a suitably geeky superlative, someone)..
But it's already taken me beyond the margins of my techy competence. I know how to transfer mp3 format files from my PC to the player. But how do I convert tracks from CDs into transferable mp3 format?
I've got Windows media player, Real player, and the basic Roxio program which came bundled with this PC. The latter seems to make it explicit that in order to convert music files to mp3 I must buy an upgrade. So I've been clicking around in the other 2 without much progress.
This should be simple, no?