Finito.

When I say "finito," I do not mean it in the sense that Italian restaurant proprietors use it, to say that, for instance, the porcini mushrooms are finished, meaning gone, whether for the night or the season.

Rather, I mean to say that it is official: I have ripped all my CDs onto my computer. I suppose I should clarify and say that about a half-dozen did not allow ripping--annoying, of course.

As expected, the classical discs went much more slowly than the others because I had a lot of tinkering to do with the fields that appear in the track list on my screen. I decided to skip the advanced tagging at this point, although at some later point I may go back and add more detailed information about record label, conductors, performers, nature of ensembles, etc. For now I tried to get as much as possible into the tags that are visible on screen. This means using the "artist" track to give information about performers (including soloists, conductors, and ensembles--but within reason), the "album" field to say who the composer is (except for on CDs featuring music of many composers, where I had to give the composer at the beginning of the track name), and the "title" field to name the piece, the movement, and usually the tempo.

According to the Creative MediaSource Organizer, I have 10,212 tracks. This does not include the 700+ digital files on my work computer that I need to bring home gradually. According to Microsoft Explorer, I have 38.1 GB in my "My Music" folder. I will be eager to see whether all that can fit on my Zen Touch.

Now to play with the music! I am very excited about the possibilities for playlist creation, and also to have everything in one place.