Array of Windows PCs, and standards, to the rescue

I've maintained a small array of Windows XP PCs for several years. I take a lot of ribbing for not dumping them all and replacing them with a single Mac. But I get more done between the four of them, and occasionally, it comes in handy. This morning, I was trying to re-rip a Red Sovine CD whose final track had some skips when iTunes played it. I had to try three of the four PCs before I could find a CD drive that was able to rip the track with no errors. The PC to which that drive belonged didn't have iTunes installed, so with some trepidation, I fired up RealPlayer, a program I still generally avoid, to rip the track. It did so beautifully, and I was able to drag the track file across my LAN back into the proper iTunes folder. Kudos to RealPlayer for supporting the AAC audio standard. (Yes, I know I should use MP3 format instead, but AAC sounds better.)