Before I got a Mac I used EAC "exact audio copy" with the "lame" encoder to rip into MP3.
It's supposedly one of the best if not the best and it's all free. Problem was my cd's are all scratched so I couldn't make perfect copies anyways and would get hung up with error reports.
I just got my imac a month ago and ordered an ipod so I'm probably going to just use itunes from now on. I haven't decided on what format to rip to yet but I have about 300 CD's to rip.