I notice that iTunes really seems to hammer the CPU when converting CD's to MP3 - I'm running Win2000 + SP4 on an AMD Athlon 2500+ running at 1.8GHz, 512Mb Memory (and plenty of available disk space) (which may not be the latest in terms of serious metal - but it's not a trivial system) - and I notice that the CPU utilization is hard on at 100%.

Is this normal - or am I doing something wrong? :confused:

It's not really an issue - but it does seem that it's best to only have iTunes running by itself when converting CD's - which can be a trifle tedious ...

Any comments?

Same here, P4 1.8, 768Mb RAM, Windows 2K - when copying/converting in iTunes I go make a coffee or something.

Try Windows Media Player 10 .
Used it a number of times for the same purpose with no problems.

I've stopped using iTunes completely except to update the songs on my playlist.

Give Musicmatch Jukebox a go. Brilliant program, prefer the layout, the playlist option, the drag and drop function to update track info, and it seems to rip CD's to MP3 better.