It would seem I have backed myself into a corner. Over the last few years I have had an ipod and I've ripped all of my CD's to AAC files. Or more specifically m4a's. I don't purchase music from the itunes store so this is all non-DRM'd music. The problem I have is that my ipod died and I would like to get a non-ipod player. However it seems that the most of the players don't play m4a files but only mp3's. The zune and ipods seem to be the only players that like the m4a's. There is no way to convert the files to another format without quality loss ?? While a computer has no problem playing m4a files it seems that very few portables will. Any advice. I really don't want to have to stay with apple.

You might be able to find some info here....
http://www.rockbox.org/
www.anythingbutipod.com

Ok, what you can do is open Itunes, go to Edit, Preferences, Clcik on the "advanced" Tab and then go to "Import." In this menu you can select the type of format you want to convert to,I reccommend .mp3 as it will play on ANYTHING. Then, once you have the bit rate selected (160-192 for decent quality) go back to your library. Highlight ALL of your music in the Itunes library. Then right-click and then click on "convert selection to mp3." It will take a long time depending on your comp, speed but it will convert all NON-DRM music to what ever fromat you wish. Once the conversion is done, sort library by file type and delete all the AAC files.