hopefully I can get some help here? I start 1st buy explaining my set up. I have a desktop computer in my living room with a 120 gig usb external hardrive attached that has about aproximately 250-300 cd ripped to it in windows media lossless, which puts about 80 gigs of space used. The computer is hardwired networked to 2 ps2 , an xbox, and roku sound bridge. Since my router also has wireless capability, I also have my laptop connected to it.

Now here is how I pretty much use it. other than internet access, I use the ps2s and xbox in the obvious manner, the roku is in my dedicated theater and I use it to stream music when I want to listen there. I use my laptop, other than internet access and other uses, to stream music to my living room a/v setup. Hopefully one day I will get a 360 to stream music to my living room system but for now I use my laptop, mostly for remote control like purposes, I use to have my desktop directly connected to my living room system but they are not next to each other so If i wanted to change song or what ever I had to sit at the desktop.


Now here is what I want to do, My cd player in my car is crap, So I want to use my laptop to connect to my car radio and listen to music, how ever I do not want to put music on my laptops hardrive, so I wanted to put some music on a flash drive and connect it to my laptop when ever I am in the car. What I need help is putting the music from the hardive on to the flash drive. I not only want to copy some songs from the hardrive to the flash drive, I want to copy and compress it to a lossy format. For example I want to take my chick corea album which is on my hardrive at wma lossless and put it on my flash drive at wma variable or similar.

Can you guys help with this?

You seem to be making this both more confusing and more difficult than it need be.

Just get a portable MP3 player and hook it into your car stereo, whether it is hardwired, FM transmitter, or cassette adapter (though it sounds like you don't have cassette in the car).

BTW, if your CD player is crap, it probably means the stereo is crap, so the music on the MP3 player will sound like crap.

I have a similar setup with similar issues and can offer some advice.

Regarding the desktop connected to the living room system: I have a computer attached to my TV and receiver that I use to listen to ripped CDs or watch movies. I've got a wireless RF keyboard and mouse that I use to control the computer. But that requires the TV to be on (since it's my monitor), so when I want to listen to music I use my wireless laptop to login to the computer via Windows Remote Desktop. I can leave the TV off and be anywhere in the house and still control my music from the wireless laptop.

Regarding listening to music in the car: Do you already have a phone jack or RCA jack input to connect the laptop to the car stereo? If not, I recommend NOT using a FM transmitter. They sound like crap. One easy solution (that I've used in three different cars from three different manufacturers) is to buy a $90 cable that converts the remote CD changer connector to RCA jacks. Most cars are pre-wired for a CD changer in the truck or where ever. There are several manufacturers, including PIE. Also, why use a laptop in the car? That's a lot of bulk. Just buy a MP3 player.

Regarding ripping to lossy: I do the same thing. I rip to WMA lossless for the home stereo, and then also rip to MP3 160KB/s VBR for the MP3 players. I chose MP3 over WMA because it will play on any player, including the iPod. I recommend Advanced WMA Workshop for converting music formats in large batches.

Hope that helps.

You seem to be making this both more confusing and more difficult than it need be.

Just get a portable MP3 player and hook it into your car stereo, whether it is hardwired, FM transmitter, or cassette adapter (though it sounds like you don't have cassette in the car).

BTW, if your CD player is crap, it probably means the stereo is crap, so the music on the MP3 player will sound like crap.

Whether I use a portable mp3 player or my flash card to use with my laptop I still have to figure out how to copy and change compression codecs from my external hard drive to the either the portable device or flash driver. Besides if my laptop can do what I want why buy a portable device? As for the sound of my current car stereo while it's not great it's not horrible. I am not corcern for super sound quality in my car right now and I mean by the cd player being crappy refers to how it reads cds. Even new cd's skips constantly on that thing.

HFB,
I have never thought about using the kind of setup that you have sounds cool. Once question however, My laptop has vista premium and my desktop has xp, does xp have remote access features?

Requarding my car stereo is has an aux input via mini jack that' how I connect my laptop. As for why to using my laptop I take it almost every where especially since I have gone back to school. I also use it to let my kids watch dvd movies when I travel. I am considering using something like an Ipod down the road or some of those car recievers that have a usb input for flash cards or mp3 players. It would be sweet if they came with built in hard drives.

HFB, I have never thought about using the kind of setup that you have sounds cool. Once question however, My laptop has vista premium and my desktop has xp, does xp have remote access features?

Yep, that will work. You need either XP Pro or Vista Premium (maybe Business also will work) to connect into other machines. But all machines (any XP and any Vista) allow other machines to connect in. (I hope that makes sense. The source has to be Pro or Premium, but the destination can be anything.)

Look for a program on the laptop called Remote Desktop Connection. On your destination desktop you'll have to enable remote access via Computer -> Properties -> Remote.

Remote desktop is a great tool. I use it to do maintenance on all the machines in my house without actually having to sit in front of those machines.

HFB,
I was trying to do that today, setting up remote access to my desktop. But I can't seem to figure it out. I assume that the computer that I want to control remotely is the destination and the computer that I want to use as the controller is the source, right. if that is the right then the computer then my destination is my desktop which has xp home and the source is my laptop which has vista premium. However when I go to computer > properties>remote the is only a set for remote assitance the place where it should say allow remote access is blank. Now I tried to do some research on windows.com I think that computers with xp pro or vista premium can be controlled but any windows platform can become a client.

Hopefully I am wrong because I would like to control the desktop and not the laptop.

Bokxer, yes that's the same definition of source and destination that I was using. The local laptop source will take over the desktop of the remote desktop destination.

As far as which version can be a source or destination, it looks like you're correct. I had it backwards. I only have XP Pro so I didn't have a way to test it.

Perhaps you could try a program called VNC. It's freeware and is basically the same thing as Remote Desktop. We use it at work and it's pretty good. The thing I don't know is whether it will leave the audio at the remote desktop rather than try to bring it to the laptop.

Thanks for the info, well if it did leave audio at the desktop it wouldn't be a problem, I just could connect my system to the desktop.