I'm in that dwindling demographic that still buys CDs. For anything that I plan to listen to on the home stereo, I can't see having a lo-res rip as my only copy. Even the new "iTunes Plus" files don't approach the bitrate of real audio CDs... which don't approach the "bandwidth" of vinyl, but obviously have a lot of advantages over analog reproduction.

The proprietary formats go both ways, too. iPods and many other players don't support .wma files. And, after years of jamming SD cards with a little bit of music on them, into my handheld computer, I found that if I wanted a dedicated music player with some real capacity, I had to get an iPod. None of the other players supports MacOS.

I keep typing more and editing it out, because I start to sound like one of those zealots, which I'm really, really not Yes, I've been a Mac user since 1989, but the initial choice was because I shared my first office - and printer - with a desktop publisher who used a Mac, and since then it's because I haven't seen any real good reason to put myself through the learning curve of an entirely new OS. (Although running Parallels gives me the opportunity to learn it a little bit at a time now, and turn the freakin' thing OFF when I get fed up )