question about ipod.

[tinyman]

soon i'll be leaving sydney for hong kong for a few months or more and i got a feeling i will be missing my cds dearly. i can't take them all with me. i'd hate to only stuff a few in some cd wallets for my trip. probably about time i stepped into this decade and get a large capacity ipod.

but my old computer's 20 gb hard drive is too tiny to store all my cds.

so can music from cd be transferred directly onto the ipod without saving onto the computer hard drive first? or do they only allow you to store what's already on your computer?

or it doesn't have to be an ipod. what was that other brand that people talk up now and then?