I'm really starting to wonder whether the convenience of selecting any song on the fly is really worth it compared to the ease of use a CD player provides. Just spin a disc and push play vs the hundreds of hours I've spent on ripping, tagging, sorting my collection plus there's the updating the playback PC's OS, antivirus, etc. Don't get me wrong, being able to call up nearly anything nearly instantly is awesome but is it worth the hours and hours lost in your opinion?
1. Spinning a disc gives you the songs on that disc only. You can shuffle or not, but that's it. If the disc ends, you have to change it or listen to all the music over. Not convenient.
2. Ripping, tagging, etc. didn't take hundreds of hours in my case - Insert disc and auto-rip completes the job and ejects disc. Insert next disc and repeat. (And I was listening to music while the music was being added.)
3. My PC was running WinXP until a recent update. It had home network access, but that was it. No updates were needed and it ran non-stop for years (save for blackouts). I expect the same of the new one.
4. My PC can stream to all of my devices on my network when I choose. It also feeds an FM modulator for listening on radios on/near my property.
5. I can make unlimited playlists, smart playlists, etc., or listen to all songs in any order I choose (alpha by track title, artist name, album name, by year produced, genre, etc., etc.)
6. If I need a physical disc without using my original, I can burn one from the music server.
7. I can load/unload/reload my portable devices from the "music server" (as I call it) at any time I want without having to rip each time.
There's more, but I'd call having a server a WIN !