Ogg Vorbis audio format

Played my first Ogg Vorbis (.ogg) encoded file today. It was the song "Somewhere I belong" by Linkin Park. Ogg Vorbis is also a lossy compression audio format like MP3, but then it has the following pros and cons compared to that format.

Pros :
(a) It is a free, open source and unpatented format. In case of the mp3 format, the musician distributing the song in the mp3 format has to pay a certain fee to Fraunhofer, cause their format is a patented one.
(b) Produces files of smaller size and of better quality than their mp3 counterpart (at least the makers of this format claim so... still have to verify their claim myself).

Cons :
(a) It is not that well supported by different portable music players and software. For example, the Windows Media Player still does not support it natively (not without installing a codec specifically for that purpose).
(b) .WAV to .OGG conversion normally takes more time than a .MP3 to .OGG conversion (all the other factors staying the same).

More stuff about Ogg Vorbis :
(1) Some Windows software that support Ogg Vorbis files - Winamp, Sonic, JetAudio... Another cool music player would be the 'Coolplayer'. It is a verrrrrrrry light-weight player and an extremely small download (318 KB only). You can download coolpayer from - http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/coolplayer/CoolPlayer215_Bin.zip?download

(2) To play Ogg Vorbis files in Windows Media Player, you need to download extra codecs. You can know more about Windows Media Player support for Ogg Vorbis at the URL - http://windowsxp.mvps.org/ogg.htm

NOTE - I tried installing both the codecs listed on this web-site, unfortunately, I did not have any success with either of them (but then, I was trying them on a system that had loads of account restrictions... hope you have better luck with them than I did).

(3) Some conversion software that you can use with the Ogg Vorbis format are -
Ogg Converter (.wav to .ogg and vice versa, .ogg to .mp3 and vice versa) : a trial software.
URL - http://www.ogg-converter.com/

For more info about Ogg Vorbis check out -
http://www.vorbis.com/faq.psp
http://www.pcquest.com/content/search/showarticle.asp?artid=45401

For general information on audio formats check out - http://207.182.248.164/docs/digital_audio_formats.htm

Bro's tips :
More on Ogg Vorbis...I wrote and compared various formats in 2001: http://www.pcquest.com/content/search/showarticle.asp?artid=25477

I've been testing MP3, OGG and AAC on my Nokia 3650 lately and OGG is superior to them all. Also the file size is small. I can fit around 100 songs in under 100 MB of space on my MMC card! AAC (its a MP4 container) is promising but I'm yet to finalize the correct encoding parameters for it. There is a fantastic convertor for WAV to OGG called OggDropXPd. I've been using it since an year now. Its great and I think its downloadable from the Ogg site somewhere. Its only a 240 kB download. Another universal and simple encoder/ convertor is dBPowerAmp. Its simply amazing.