Your computer is a harsh mistress. While on one hand, it offers unlimited access to information at the click of a button, it also can confuse, turning an ordinary person into a greasy and pale shell of a human being, sitting for hours trying to figure out the uses for its many buttons. You may be even less excited to figure out its mysteries.

But everyone wants to know how to download mp3s, especially if you’re in college and that’s your best, if only, bet at keeping up your music collection. A simple computer file can make any band a local one through a download, something that might actually hurt true local bands, but is great for the music fan.

Although most people are familiar with mp3s and what they are, many may not know how to look for the best resources to obtain the songs you actually want and to do it quickly, for fear of getting pinched by the music police.

In order to download songs, you first need to have a computer equipped with both Internet service and a CD-ROM drive. Next, the only thing standing between you and your stolen songs is a decent search engine.

Napster, the most common outlet for music pirating, is closed because of legal issues. Morpheus, its self-named replacement, can be difficult to use for a rookie and doesn’t really offer that wide of a variety of music anyway. The best bet is a hidden jewel called Audiogalaxy.

At www.audiogalaxy.com, its an Austin, Texas-based system that provides search tools to find literally any song title, artist or whole album online. Using satellites that allow mp3 sharing with other users, it contains an index of over 800,000 songs from thousands of music sites all over the world.

But the best thing about the system is its ability to convert mp3s to the .wav file format, which is computer talk meaning that it gives you songs that all users can record onto a blank CD.

Getting to Audiogalaxy is easier than it sounds. It can’t be accessed by itself online, but is downloaded to your computer by going to download.com. Once it’s located and downloaded, a personal account will be created and an icon will be installed on your desktop. It’s all for free of course, because otherwise, what’s the point?

Now that Audiogalaxy is up and running, the next chore is to make a list of what songs to find. Whatever you think of, they’ll have it. You can search by either song title or artist’s name and the satellites will find it, sometimes in many different versions. If not sure about which one to pick, just click on the “most popular version” button and it will bring up the version with the best sound quality.

More than two songs can be downloaded at a time, so it won’t take long to secure a CDs worth of tracks. Songs can be played on most common mp3 players, one of which usually is installed onto home PCs. A popular player called Winamp is another option, which also is available at download.com.

After downloading songs and listening to them to make sure they’re the right ones, they can be transferred to a blank CD, or CD-R, by using a program called Roxio Easy CD Creator 5, which also can be downloaded for free from download.com. Using this software, one can search for mp3 files and transfer them to a music project. Don’t forget to “close the project” when you’re done, or else your new CD won’t play.

Following these easy steps, even the computer illiterate can enjoy themselves and get some free music in the process. It is advisable, however, to do it quickly, before it becomes illegal and gets shut down just like Napster.