Need basic iPod help...

To your question about downloading from iTunes, if your interest is in getting the best possible sound quality and you have the option of ripping the same music from a CD, yes, it's a bad idea to download from iTunes. All iTunes music is in lossy, compressed format and won't sound as good in a high-resolution system.

On the other hand, the selection in iTunes is huge and for lots of uses the quality is just fine.

I agree that for any kind of critical listening you'd want the highest quality file possible for your music server, CD quality at a minimum and even higher if you can find it.

But, I listen to music in a lot of situations, planes, the gym, in the car, where the difference between a 256kbps mp3 and a lossless file just isn't audible. Being able to download and discover new music conveniently and cheaply is great. I don't get a lot of music from iTunes but have a subscription to emusic.com that I've found to be great for exploring music I might not otherwise ever know about.