Welcome to the 21st century.Just in case you missed the memo, audio cassette tapes have gone the way of the Deloreon and Jane Fonda workout videos. While these were popular in the 1980s, they have all but disappeared from the American landscape. Rather than throwing away your cassette collection, convert it to CDs for playing in car CD players or for downloading onto your mp3 player. While you do not have to be a complete tech junky to accomplish this, you will need basic computer skills.What do I need?The materials needed to convert your audio tapes to CD is simple. You only need a cassette player, computer with a CD burner, blank CD-RWs or CD-Rs, a two-way mini-jack to go between the headphone input on your tape player and the microphone input on your computer and a software audio-capture program like Audacity. These materials are readily available from electronics stores, but audio capture programs can be found for download on the internet. Some of these are free programs, like Audacity. Download programs from the Internet before beginning.What's the difference between CD-Rs and CD-RWs? You can erase and rewrite files on a CD-RW, but you can't with a CD-R. Move your musicTo convert your cassettes to CDs, put the cassette into your player. Insert one end of the cable into the headphone input on the cassette player and the opposite end into the microphone input on your computer. Insert a CD into your computer CD burner. Start up your audio capture program and follow the instructions given for when to start the cassette player and beginning recording. Depending on the program you are using, you might need to convert the music captured from the cassette to an mp3 file for downloading onto an iPod or mp3 player. The process is as simple as that.