Does WMP not have the ability to rip as mp3's? I don't use the windows verson wmp. There's other alternatives & some are free. Not being a windows user per se I don't know what they are.

Actually I just did a quick google for free mp3 rippers from cd & found these ones (click on link) & yes they're all free. Other results are HERE.

May I recommend you set the bit-rate for encoding much higher than 128 kbps. 320 is the highest. 192 is good & anything above that is highly sought after.