Ripping CD's with iTunes

I personally use iTunes for my music needs on the PC. It's fairly simple and intuitive in my opinion. Until recently I used to just plunk my CD in my PC and played it. My hard drive space was limited so I was trying to conserve space. Recently after upgrading my hard drive I tried my hand at "ripping" my CD's onto my PC. I've come to favor Apple's iTunes player. Though there are others I'd just thought I'd share a little of my experience and give a very basic tutorial on this subject. I'm going to assume you've already have iTunes installed and CD's in hand. Here we go....

1. First of all you open your iTunes program either by click on your desktop icon or programs menu.

2. Open your CD/DVD player and insert your CD of choice. At this point you'll wait for iTunes to gather information on your CD. This shouldn't take too long.







3. When iTunes is done retrieving information you'll get a pop-up asking if you'd like to import(aka: Rip) your CD onto iTunes. You wish to rip entire CD click on "Yes". If wish to select certain songs click "No" and see step 4. Now sit back let the PC do the rest. iTunes will play the music as it's importing your CD.





4. After you've clicked "No"(see step 3). Uncheck the songs you don't want from the list. Then click "Import CD" button on lower right hand corner of iTunes window. It will then "import" only the songs that are check marked.

Well there you have it. It's fairly simple. There are other settings and stuff you can get into but I just wanted to cover the basics here. I've got addicted to adding my music myself. I hope this was informative and helpful. Thanks for reading and "Long Live Rock!"

How-to: Install CD/DVD drive

Want to upgrade your old CD/DVD drive? Recently I picked a newer CD/DVD Writer by LiteOn. This features "Lightscribe" which perhaps I'll demo at a later time. I'd like to show you the steps on how change one of these out. It's fairly simple, so easy a cavegeek could do it. If you know which end of a Phillips screwdriver to use then you can do it. I'll go over the steps here and maybe in the future you'll be changing yours out. I'll go over the parts and tools you'll need and then the steps to install your drive. OK here we go...

Items needed:

1. CD/DVD drive
2. Phillips screwdriver
3. ESD wrist strap
4. Instruction Manual
5. Cup of fresh coffee (Ok you don't need this but I do)

The patient is my trusty workhorse Gateway low-profile PC . It may have only a Pentium III but it hasn't let me down yet.

First step: Unplug the case and remove all attachments. Remove cover. Usually it's held by some screws in the rear of the case. This where you'll need your Phillips screwdriver. Take the cover off. Some cases can be a bit tricky to open so be careful some cases have sharp edges on inside.




Second step: After the case is open locate the CD drive inside. Remove the cables from the rear of the CD drive. Be careful removing cables the can be stubborn. More than once my hands have slipped and caused me to bang my hand. Sometimes resulting in the need of a band-aid. Just try and wiggle them out a bit they should come out. On a side note be aware of ESD. Which in simple terms static. Either use a wrist ground strap or at least touch the outside steel case that before sticking your hand inside case. Some components can be destroyed be static discharges you can't even feel. So be aware!


Third step: Then remove the screws holding the drive in. Remove the drive from the bay. Most of the time it should slide out the front of the case. In this case Gateway had a nice feature that they have a quick release mechanism, but for most cases though you may need a small Phillips head screwdriver to remove the drive screws.



Handy Tip: Oh yeah I almost forgot. It's probably good idea to read over the instructions before beginning. Even though I've done this many times before it's still a good ides to at least skim through it or keep them handy. I've been guilty of just tossing them aside and jumping ahead into project only to need them halfway through a project. These instructions came in so many languages that I think they even include Romulan and Klingon.

LiteOn was even nice enough to provide a drive opener.
That was the first time I'd seen that one. came handy when I changed the faceplate.

Fourth Step: Install the new drive in reverse order, secure the drive, plug cables back in,replace computer cover and plug everything back in. Power it back up and if all went well Windows should recognize and install your drive. You may have to install additional software depending on the drive.

When it's done reach around and pat yourself on the back. Not so hard is it? Well that's enough for now. I hope you learned something today. If you have any questions feel free to contact me. Thanks for coming by today and I hope you return.

Lightscribe System Software

I may have mentioned before that last week I bought a new DVD Writer for one of my PC's. One of the features of it was something called Lightscribe. Lightscribe does sort of what it sounds like. It scribes labels on your CD/DVD. I had seen this advertised before and it was a selling point for me. Well just yesterday I finally purchased some Lightscribe CD/DVD's and decided to give it a try. My first couple of ones I wasn't impressed with. I used the Nero OEM software that came with the writer. They came out very light and were hard to read. I thought to myself I'm doing something wrong. So I Googled lightscribe software and I came across there website. I found some cool softwre add-ons and an update for my label writing. It also seems like I didn't have the latest Lightscribe System Software. I tried it out again this morning using one of the templates I downloaded and using Lightscribe program and low and behold it came out beautiful. Crisp clear and easy to read. For right now if you bought a writer with Nero do yourself a favor and checkout the Lightscribe website and update your software and use there software to do the label. I do like it overall and can't wait to try another. Take care and thanks for coming by.