What should I use to rip music to my new Zune 80?

Use Mediamonkey (it uses LAME but makes it user friendly).
Download it HERE.

You can download and install the Zune Software HERE.

Enjoy your Zune, it's a great device.

I believe media monkey syncs as well

Yes, and thats all you will want to use it for. As it is now, if you try to add an album with more than one artist, it will set each song into its own category. Only solution Ive found is to edit the ID tags so that all the artists of the album and songs belonging to said album show as being the same name. For example, a album by the Chemical Brothers with a few from ATB, will not show up under the same album. Only issue Ive come across, but IMO, it is a rather large one, and I can imagine all the gripes a "power user" will come away with after using the software for more than just syncing music to their Zune.

Note, this is with the latest 01-22 update installed. Don't know how they missed the problem I encountered, the Zune Team seems to be made up of quite a few dedicated individuals.

I don't believe you can use MM to sync the Zune, only to rip music, adjust tags, etc.

EAC is a good one but you will need to read up on how to configure it.

Exact Audio Copy

Does not much matter what ripper you choose, as long as it rips to mp3, AAC or WMA lossless. I would think Windows Media Player is the best match for the Zune. Mp3 and AAC will be lossy formats. If the best quality of tunes is important to you, you are stuck with WMA lossless.

you have much to learn. many here prefer to use LAME (a specific MP3 encoder). the zune software offers very few options in determining the quality of a rip.

I rip in WMP and just got a Zune yesterday and have had major problems getting the music to transfer in its entirety. After 5 attempts of trying to move just 10GB of music - I have ended up 300 songs short. Every single album has tracks missing, yet I checked everything before I made the transfer - and all my info is present and correct. I've deleted the files from the Zune software and started over and over again - but still it doesn't want to transfer everything.

I did have issues with track numbers initially. Only the tracks that had a number as part of the title got transferred (01 - Comfortably Numb). Tracks without a number before the title got left behind. I had tracks 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, from one album - and 1 2 and 3 (with no track numbers before the title) didn't transfer. So I put a track number before each and every track (1400) and all that happened was some of them transferred - and some didn't.

There doesn't seem to be a pattern.

I ripped some CDs in the Zune software to see if WMP was the problem, and the same thing happened. I have no idea why and I plan to persevere tomorrow by adding one album at a time and trying to make sense of what's going on.

But it's very frustrating when there doesn't seem to be a logical reason for it.

EDIT: Funny thing is, I was more concerned about my compilation albums being split up - and yet they ended up being fine and staying in the same album (missing some tracks of course, but the ones that 'made it' didn't get split up)

WMP insert tags on your songs that are not compatible with the Zune software.
Check if your tracks are protected with DRM using Windows Explorer and review the tags information with Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v1, ID3v2, APEv2)
Tags that cause trouble are (Copyright, ISRC, ContentProvider, WMPRating, etc)

Try using the Collection Reset Tool and update to the latest Zune software version 2.3

Check your track #, artist, album artist (BAND), year, genre, title tags using either MediaMonkey Free MP3 Jukebox Player, Music Library Organizer and Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v1, ID3v2, APEv2)

Finally, verify your tags are saved in id3v2.3 with UTF-16 encoding.

Thanks. I'll try that. I don't have any DRM issues. All my CDs are original, but I'll check the tags information anyway.

I've got the latest version 2.3 - but I didn't know there was a Collection Reset Tool so I'll check that as well.

Thanks again

YEP!! That worked. I didn't even know there was one! Thanks very much. One big headache gone now

One other thing - when I viewed the tags (in mp3 tag) it seemed all the artwork was in 200 x 200 jpeg - whereas the artwork I applied was all 500 x 500.

Does the Zune automatically resize it, regardless of the size I chose?

Anyway, the main thing is the reset tool worked, huge huge relief. I thought I'd be forever mourning my missing 300 tracks!

the artworks get extracted from the songs in full size and stored intact under the "Art Cache" folder.
On the Zune device, all artwork are scaled to 240 x 240.