AOL offers new way to e-mail

Q. We have a lot of America Online e-mail saved on our computer. We want to unload that e-mail to a file so that we can access it after we stop subscribing to AOL. Can you suggest a technique or product that will enable us to do that? We use AOL 9.0.
A. After more than a decade of leaving its users unable to transfer their e-mail from its proprietary software, AOL switched gears a couple of months back.
America Online now lets its customers read and send AOL e-mail using software like Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express and Eudora.
For example, in Outlook you just click on Tools and E-mail Accounts and then set up an AOL account using IMAP, or Internet Message Access Protocol.
AOL customers can get detailed instructions for making the switches by using the keyword Microsoft Outlook. Type Control + K to call up the search box.
You may need to move your saved mail into different folders on AOL before you can use the software to retrieve archived messages, but this is a simple matter of dragging and dropping notes.
Remember that to drag and drop large numbers of messages, select the first one and then scroll down to the last one and then hold down the Shift key and click on it. This will paint all the e-mails so that you can do things like delete them or move them.
Q. I have several hundred cassette tapes that I would like to convert to CDs. I have a PC with an Intel Pentium 4 and use Windows XP Home Edition. What additional hardware/software do I need to make the conversion? About how many minutes of tape can fit on to one typical CD?
A. Your quest is a common one, and there are many different ways to convert one's analog music collection from LPs or cassette tapes to digital files stored on CDs.
Because your entire setup revolves around Windows XP, let's cover how to create those CDs the way Microsoft wants you to do it.
This means using Microsoft software exclusively and saving the music files in formats that Microsoft created to compete with the MP3 formats long used by computer audiophiles.
Also, this answer will assume that your relatively top-of-the-line Pentium machine includes an audio line-in port on the sound card, which is the case with just about all the latest computers.
That said, the drill is pretty simple. Check to see if your version of Windows came with Microsoft Digital Media Plus.
If not, go to www.microsoft. com/plus and buy this $20 plug-in for Microsoft Media Player 9, which is included in Windows XP.
Digital Media Plus includes an analog-to-digital-recording module that is very easy to use. It even handles removing hiss and scratch noises and can do fade-outs.
Get an ordinary RCA pin-type audio-out cable to connect between the computer sound card and your music player. Now all you need to do is fire up the Plus software and play a tape or LP into the sound card.
The software breaks songs into tracks and does other housekeeping.
The files all come out in Microsoft's own WMA audio format, which is highly compressed and quite good. (Plus, it lets advanced users make noncompressed recordings.)
The bad news is that recording gets done at the same speed as playing your entire music collection in real time. Figure on 1 megabyte of file for every minute of music.
A CD holds about 650 mb, which works out to more than 100 hours of compressed music per CD.
That, of course, means you must spend 100 hours playing your music.
XContact Jim Coates via e-mail at jcoates@tribune.com or via snail mail at the Chicago Tribune, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at www.chicagotribune.com/askjim.