The above points about sound quality are all very true and equally valid, but there are a few more things to consider:

* MP3s don't just chop off the high and low bits - they take advantage of lulls in the 'busyness' of the piece to lower the bandwidth required to play it back, they even out parts of such complexity that the average listener wouldn't notice, and they use many other subtle and intesely mathematical ways of cropping your music file down to around a tenth of its original size on average.

* The type of music you encode to MP3 will drastically influence the quality of playback, all other things being equal. You might find that very sparse techno comes across just fine, whereas classical recording can lose clarity and the sense of 'space'.

* In some cases, the quality of certain instruments may decrease - cymbals can become murkier, highly overdriven guitars may sound less defined - just because a frequency is outside the range of human hearing, it doesn't mean that it has no effect on the frequencies you *can* hear - soundwaves are very complex things, and removing or altering any part can have surprising knock-on effects

* I find that the optimum encoding rate is 192bit, as it mainatins a fair copy of the CD original without sacrificing too much of the original feel. Many encoderS allow you to choose a 'variable bit rate' setting which constantly changes the compression ratio to take advantage of bits of the music that are more simplistic and so require less hard work to decompress. Opinions are still divided over this one, but good encoders seem to do the job just fine and it does reduce the size of the final files.

* Make sure you pick an MP3 player with the most flexibility - if it can playback multiple bitrates including VBR, and can play files from folders under different CD formats with no filename length limitation, you're doing well. Always approach a decent ICE specialist rather than going to somewhere like Dixons, as most of the high street folk really don't have a clue about the subleties of theie products.

* You do have to bear in mind that the quality of the original recording will directly affect the quality of your MP3 - its the old 'garbage in, garbage out' adage again :)

* Despite the above, don't worry too much about the idea of compressing music - minidiscs use compression and digital recording techniques of any kind sacrifice some of the original sound. Every single disc in your CD collection is playing back less than was originally present when the musicians were recording the session, but the techniques are so snazzy that you can only tell if you have a very good ear, and listen to the original master tapes side by side with the final recording

* Always remember that while the MP3 standard is legal, much of what is done with it isn't - any licensed piece of music you rip to MP3 is an illegal copy, despite you owning the original.

Even with all that in mind, the MP3 format is fantastic - it opens up the music world in ways we've never had before. There are other standards (such as Ogg Vorbis) which give arguably better quality playback than a similar MP3, and take less space to do so. The future is looking good...

Have fun! :)

That's a facelift?

It's an interesting idea but it would mean a fair bit of unpaid effort for HJ.

The problem with any statistics, and especially these, is they could be very misleading due to bias. A somewhat stereotyped example (and not necessarily true) is that Honda attracts many elderly buyers, who may be less likely to write in the BR or to HJ about any faults, or have faults rectified quickly by the dealer meaning no need to kick up a fuss. The reliability stats would be artificially improved.

The following thread and others discussed the Warranty Direct index, which is similar to what you would like:
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?f=2&t=12...0
The general view was that it is difficult to draw many genuine conclusions from the results.

The 'What’s Bad' and 'What to watch for' gives, in my opinion, a useful guide to actual issues. A warning to check that a cambelt has been renewed means a lot more than such car having a score of 68.

Each model of car will have good and bad points. These will vary between individual cars down to luck and use. I don't think there is any alternative to weighing up the good and bad points and making a final decision on how those points are important to you.

This could be a thread and a half:

My sub-division fire engine was unable to respond to a fire because it was the fire chief's birthday and he had used it to take the crew to lunch.

The tollways are privately run: the manager closed off a 30 km portion so that the procession following his daughter and her groom to their wedding would not be overtaken or stuck in traffic.

Makati City has banned all left turns because of the obstruction caused when other vehicles turn across each other's path. This is actually very valis in the sense that most traffic slowdowns are caused by cars making left turns or u-turning and jamming up the flow, but try to find your destination by going endlessly clockwise with a good map.......

Some one-way streets are made two-way on Sundays, but not ALL. Go figure when you get hauled over....

Have a scan through the ads in any car mag - there are usually quite a few companies that advertise 'Mileage Correction' services - Citroen are just saying they can't plug THEIR diagnostic computer into it and do it, but that doesn't mean someone else hasn't worked out how to do it!

Richard