After driving for thousands of miles over the past few months, I have to say that one of the most vital accessories we purchased for this cross-country road trip has to be our iPod. We got a used 40GB iPod on eBay that has a good dent in it, but it was a deal!

I spent many a late night transferring most of our CD collection onto it before we left, and it was time well spent. I only wish I had copied all of our CDs.

While you can always find classic rock somewhere on the dial, much of this country has really, really bad radio. That’s why I was happy to find out that Amazon is finally offering MP3 downloads!

We have enjoyed listening to audiobooks while driving through states with nothing but death metal and preachers on the airwaves. And while I can neither confirm nor deny that I have ever downloaded music from less than reputable sources, I am glad to hear there is now an alternative to iTunes.

Amazon has great prices on individual songs and entire albums. Most songs are priced from 89¢ to 99¢. Most full albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99. And the top 100 best-selling albums are $8.99 or less, unless marked otherwise.

Best yet, every MP3 on Amazon is available without digital rights management (DRM) software. This means you can enjoy Amazon music downloads any hardware device and burn the songs to CD, as many times as you like. Not that you would dare share music you downloaded with others … I’m sure you wouldn’t.