For all the lock-in that everyone claims Apple has. From my experience I had never bought anything from iTunes until just recently. When they finally dropped th

For all the lock-in that everyone claims Apple has. From my experience I had never bought anything from iTunes until just recently. When they finally dropped the DRM on their music I assumed it was safe to proceed. I have had an AppleID since the store opened. Their album covers were consistently the best (other sites have sprung up since then), and stupidly easy to work with (right click, download album art). The majority of my music is Lame encoded MP3, reaching all the way back to 1997, AAC and ALAC for the more recent stuff. My iPods 2G,5G, and Touch, plays everyone of them. Before this I had a Sony MD player. At one point I really thought MD was the future but Sony kept turning the screws, it was hard to get blank media, and re-encoding my music just killed it for me. BTW, for AAC, every device I bought in the last 2-3 years supports it. The only exception was Windows OOTB, but that has changed in Windows7. The last device I own from Sony is the PS3. I really think this is the last stop as far as media is concerned. I've using a mediatank to hold my music and HD movies. It has worked out wonderfully, the PS3 is barely touched. I've unplugged it so I can free up an HDMI port.