One alternative is to use ogg audio format (which is what I do).
Indeed, I only found out about the MP3 patent issues in relation to Red Hat Linux and Fedora. Ogg is an excellent audio format, and I've been using it recently with what my ears perceive to be better audio quality from similar filesizes (based on an excellent Bose system). I also have found and grown to love FLAC, since that is a lossless codec which will not compromise audio quality in any way, but which did save me over 200GB in storage. :-)
FLAC for primary storage and Ogg for putting music on my laptop have been a dream, really.
-- Rodolfo J. Paiz rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.simpaticus.com
