Assuming you only want to do this once, and you want to make sure you've done everything as correctly as possible, these instructions are for you.
Use EAC and Lame 3.97beta2
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ <-- EAC
http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html <-get LAME 3.97 beta 2 ACM, don't get any alphas.
Unzip LAME somewhere, and install EAC. Let EAC go through it's configuration wizard (make sure you tell it you want accuracy over speed). When it's done, press F11 to go to the compression options. Pick the External compressor tab. Check "Use external program for compression" pick "user defined encoder" and point it to the LAME.exe in the spot you unzipped LAME. You can set anything you want for the bitrate, it ignores this. I check "delete .wav after compression". I also prefer to let EAC add an ID3 tag, so I check that as well. For the additional command line options, this is where you have a choice. Personally, I use "-V 1 --vbr-new %s %d" (less the quotes). The quality number is after the
V.
This thread
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=28124 has more information on recommended LAME settings. I found V 1 to be transparent, and I don't really worry about file size too much. I got over 400 cds compressed to about 40gigs using that setting. It tends to average around 225kbit/sec.
On the ID3 Tag tab I check "use ID3v1.1 instead of 1.0" and "additionally write ID3V2 tags..."
Next, download and install the Accuraterip plugin.
http://www.accuraterip.com/ You will need to copy a file from the install directory to the EAC directory. The next time you start EAC it should start an accuraterip setup dialog prompting you to put in a few discs and it will test them (you'll want to pick discs that are very popular). It will automatically set up the offset in EAC to account for your CD/DVD drive.
Now you're pretty much all set, so grab your first disc toss it in the drive, let it get the titles from the freedb and then select all the tracks on the disc, right click and select, "test and copy selected tracks", then "compressed" or use SHIFT + F6. Point it to where you want to save them, and viola.
After ripping is done compare a report from accuraterip should pop up telling you if your rip matches other rips of the same disc, or not, and how confident it is that you rip is right, or wrong. It may also tell you that your disc is not in the database. Click ok to get back to the main EAC window. If it says your disc isn't found, or tells you that your disc doesn't match the one in the database, or if it tells you that one of the tracks doesn't match, compare the read and test CRC. If they match you're good to go (in the case of the disc not found, or your rip may be different from the one found in the database). Usually, if all the tracks check out in accuraterip except one but the CRC matches (often it doesn't) I will take the disc out of the drive and make sure the bottom isn't scratched or damaged. Sometimes I will pick just that track and test and copy that track again, or try it in another drive. Sometimes you just can't get one track to match, but the Test and Read CRC match, so you move on.
This will allow you to ensure your mp3 rips are as error free as possible, and they'll be high quality so you won't find yourself wishing you used a higher quality compression setting later, or finding glitches in the mp3 files.
Also, if you have a dual core, or hyperthreaded PC (which it doesn't look like you do), you can set EAC to queue compression in the background while it rips. (under EAC Options, tools tab, "On extraction, start external compressors..."). This will speed things up, but if you are running single core, it can mess up your ripping because the mp3 compressor uses all the CPU.
Other options worth checking are "automatically access online freedb database", Set the error recovery to high. I like to set my naming convention to "%N - %T" (no quotes) and "%N - %A - %T" for various artist discs.
