I know Stuart was recently ambitious enough to attempt the transfer of all his CDs into digital format, but every time I rip a CD and wait for the painstaking process to be done (listening to the horrific grinding spinning noise the whole time), I think about how many CDs I've collected over the years and conclude that I'll probably be listening to CDs even when everyone else has all their music stored on holographic jewels around their necks. Digital storage offers so many advantages, but unless you're a real young'un, you likely have much of your music collection stored in boxes, not a hard drive. There are actually services available for people who want to have someone else transfer their entire music collections in one go (and who don't want to spend a weekend in a ripping frenzy, unlike Stuart) but they're expensive. RipDigital, probably the best known of these companies, charges $199 for 200 CDs, enough to buy you 199 brand-new iTunes tracks.

Of course, those guys at RipDigital don't have employees sitting there ripping each CD one by one; they've got the big honking machines that you throw a whole box of CDs into which spit out mp3s. The large capacity rippers tended to be prohibitively expensive for home use, not to mention being bigger than my washing machine, but a new one, the Pico MP3 ripper, weighs just 6.5 lbs. and costs $699. Yes, you could get about 700 CDs converted by RipDigital for you for that much, but the Pico will let you start your own neighborhood or family racket, letting you rip 25 CDs in a go, totally hands-free. The Pico will rip into mp3, wav, aiff, or flac files, and will retrieve all your CD track information from CDDB just like an application like iTunes will do.

The Pico is also a disc duplicator, so you can make up to 12 CDs or 6 DVDs an hour, a big advantage if you're the type who likes to share the "wealth" when you've compiled all your home movies onto DVD.

The Pico super-duper drive connects through USB 2.0, and rips right into any home computer. The $699 price includes 50 blank recordable DVDs and a lifetime discount on Disk Makers other compatible blank media.