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That's a very, very, very, very bad idea. Let me explain why.

First.
Let me get some definitions straight:
mp3: Lossy format. Converting to mp3 means encoding your music. The best encoder is LAME (As proof, I suggest you check out hydrogenaudio)

ogg Vorbis: Lossy format. Converting to ogg means encoding your music. The best encoder is (offcourse) the original ogg Vorbis encoder.

mpc/Musepack: Yet an other lossy format. Converting to mpc means encoding your music. The best encoder is (offcourse) the original Musepack encoder.

flac: Lossless format. Converting to flac means compressing your music, as in: "I just compressed a text file, and did not lose any bytes in the file during compression". The best compressor for FLAC is offcourse the original FLAC Compressor.

Compressing: Making filesize smaller, without loss of data.

Encoding with lossy format: Making filesize smaller, at the cost of audio information.

Second.
To transcode your .mp3 files into .ogg, you'd need to first convert all of your .mp3 files into ogg. This would require the use of the LAME encoder (To convert the mp3's to wav), and then the ogg Vorbis encoder would have to convert all those wavs into .ogg format. You will lose all your id3 tag information.
Anyone who comes up with a simpler/faster solution (ie. "You dont need to convert to wav first!"), has very little to no insight into how digital audio encoding works, and what happens in the process of a transcoding/encoding/decoding.

Third.
If you convert from a lossy format to a lossy format, you will lose significant amounts of quality. DO NOT CONVERT FROM LOSSY TO LOSSY!
It does not matter if you convert a 320kbps mp3 into super-high-quality ogg - You still get huge amounts of loss due to the fact that the original material is lossy.

Fourth.
If you want to test out ogg Vorbis, then encode any of your legally bought hi-quality cd's to ogg, and listen to wether you like the result.

Fifth.
This should be obvious, but I'll tell you anyway: If you convert from lossy to lossless (ie wav or flac), quality will NOT increase.

Hope I could be of some informative value to you.

Ogg Vorbis support is indeed nice. Pay attention to Neuros development in the next few months. When it starts to support Musepack, the real fun will begin (twice the battery time, anyone?). For info - Musepack/MPC/MPEG+

for me. Once I tried foobar2000 there was no going back.

Features
* Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player
* Audio formats supported "out-of-the-box": WAV, AIFF, VOC, AU, SND, Ogg Vorbis, MPC, MP2, MP3, MPEG-4 AAC
* Audio formats supported through official addons: FLAC, OggFLAC, Monkey's Audio, WavPack, Speex, CDDA, TFMX, SPC, various MOD types; extraction on-the-fly from RAR, 7-ZIP & ZIP archives
* Full Unicode support on Windows NT
* ReplayGain support
* Low memory footprint, efficient handling of really large playlists
* Advanced file info processing capabilities (generic file info box and masstagger)
* Highly customizable playlist display
* Customizable keyboard shortcuts
* Most of standard components are opensourced under BSD license (source included with the SDK)

If you've ever tried writing a plugin for Winamp you'll fall in love with the fb2k SDK, its like heaven compared to the other player. ;-)

Also, might I suggest using the MusePack audio format, as it produces higher quality encodes, and is faster than mp3 (both for encoding and decoding), which would be nice for your low-spec machine. However, all the players I know that can use it are X-based (other than the command-line decoder). Is it really an issue to run an X session that opens XMMS? You can use the built-in twm window manager, no Gnome/KDE nonsense.

I agree that iTunes is bloated and doesn't behave well by default (at least in Windows). I agree that Winamp is way better than iTunes as a music player, etc, etc.

But I also believe that Justin Frankel was completely frustrated for not being able to take Winamp even further. Try foobar2000. Don't give up after you see the interface (most new users are scared by the absence of skins :-O ) Try using it for some days. Check some third-party plugins and some alternative formatting strings. And, even more important, its audio capabilities. It has built-in support for every major lossy audio format out there (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, AAC, etc) and also features ReplayGain, proper dither, supports all major tagging systems properly and it's completely customizable.

BTW, foobar2000 is developed by Peter Pawlowski that once worked for Nullsoft (Winamp's current default output plugins were made by him - check the about box). I guess he just got tired of Nullsoft/AOL corporate inertia.

ok so mp3 is teh industry standard...

but it has been around for so long...

in my opinion Musepack (or MPC) which used to be called Mpegplus is by far the best codec for several reasons...

1. very high quality: for the most part even the standard setting for Musepack files is transparent to most people... and i dont mean about equal with 128k mp3... it is MUCH better.

2. ONE standard encoder: mp3 could be great, but there are so many different types of mp3... Xing, LAME, FhG, etc... they dont all sound the same... and with music on the net, there really is no way to tell what has encoded which file.

3. Low CPU usage: on my tests, decoding a MPC file (or playing a MPC file) uses less CPU power than playing or decoding even a MP3 file. thats something to say for use in portables, as for the most part companies dont want to sacrifice batteries like crazy for a faster more powerful cpu.

4. potential: MPC has come quite far since i have been around... and who knows where it will go. i know for a fact that stream version 8 is now being actively worked on. with this we will get support for multiple sampling rates and multiple chanels, along with a ton of other improvements. also there has recetly been started a p2p sharing of MPC files (visit http://aquaudio.yi.org/board for more info) and we already have winamp support and support in EAC and a slew of other programs.

5. (for now) its free: MPC decoder has always been free. and so has the encoder... with the completion of the software it is possible the (one) creator of the format will charge a small fee, as he has based some of his work on the sub band technologies patented by philips (i believe that is the company). i do believe however that there will never be a charge for playing the files and currently there is no red tape around the format (as there was with AAC).

personally i believe MPC has the best things going for it. sure maybe OGG is 100% free, but it uses more CPU power and is not completely developed yet (and because of its open nature the development is excrutiatingly slow). sure WMA is made by microsoft, but it has all sorts of red tape around it. AAC has great quality, but once again the red tape. sure mp3 has the support, but MPC is getting there...

people need to stop living in the past and hear what they have been missing.

for basic info on Musepack, please visit musepack.net and/or musepack.org (not yet completed).