Rather than buying a prepackaged music CD at retail, your computer lets you create your own custom disc – with the songs you like and in the order you choose. The process is often referred to as "burning" a CD, which basically means to copy songs from your computer to a recordable disc.

And you don’t need to be a computer engineer to pull it off.

All you need is a few songs downloaded from the Internet (or "ripped" from your CD collection), some blank discs and a recordable CD/DVD drive (also known as a "DVD burner").

If you bought your computer over the past eight years or so, it should have a CD burner built-in, while newer PCs can also burn files to a recordable DVD. But since most CD players cannot play DVDs, let's focus on CDs here.

Here’s what to do:

Step 1

Buy a couple of blank recordable CDs from your local electronics store. They're cheaper in bulk -- such as a spindle of 50 or 100 discs -- but you won't get the protective jewel cases with them (chances are you have a stack at home anyway). Discs that say CD-R or CD+R can be used only once, while CD-RW ("rewritable") discs can be used multiple times -- though not as many CD players will read these.

Step 2

Decide what kind of CD you want to create. Maybe it's your own "Greatest Hits" collection of tunes from your favourite band, instead of the record label telling you which is their best songs? Or perhaps it's a "driving compilation" for the car or a "dance mix" for running on the treadmill? If you don't already have these songs on your computer (e.g. C:\My Music folder), download "unprotected" songs from a favourite online store, such as iTunes (if "protected" with digital rights management, or DRM, you won't be able to make a CD with them).

Step 3

When you pop the blank disc into your computer's CD/DVD burner, you should see a window pop up that asks you which program you'd like to open, such as iTunes, Windows Media Player, Nero or Roxio burning software, and so on. Select the program you're most comfortable with. Burning the CD with songs should be a similar process between all the programs: you'll need to drag and drop the songs you want to copy into a playlist order and then click "Burn" or "Create Audio CD." When in doubt, check the Help or Tutorials section.

Note: Programs like Roxio and Nero also let you burn a data disc, but doing this will keep the song's compressed format (e.g. MP3, WMA or AAC) and won't likely work in your CD player. By selecting "audio disc," it will uncompress the songs into a regular music CD format (allowing up to 80 minutes per CD).