Travel Technology - Netbook for music?

This may seem a really obvious question, but although I'm knowledgeable about home pcs I have no experience with laptops, netbooks, or ipods.

On my home computer, I can use software to record CDs to my hard disk, and then play them back through speakers connected to the computer.

(I say CDs since most of the music I want to record is obscure stuff only available on CD, but the same basic question would I assume apply to MP3 and other format sound files.)

So my question is: can you do the same thing with a netbook, and is it practical to do so? To put the question another way, if you travel with a netbook (and of course speakers or earphones,) can your netbook also serve you for music like an iPod, so you don't have to take one?

Thanks for any advice.

On my home computer, I can use software to record CDs to my hard disk, and then play them back through speakers connected to the computer.

So my question is: can you do the same thing with a netbook, and is it practical to do so? To put the question another way, if you travel with a netbook (and of course speakers or earphones,) can your netbook also serve you for music like an iPod, so you don't have to take one?

Netbooks don't usually have CD drives, so you'll either need to buy one, or transfer files from another computer. You can play music with the netbook.

I personally think it's a good idea to take some kind of mp3 player in addition to a netbook. The players are tiny and have great battery life (16 hours for my iPod). I don't think you'd ever find a netbook with such great battery capacity. And I'd feel bad if my netbook battery were completely drained from music, just as I need to see an important document.

You might be able to save a little space by charging the mp3 player through the netbook, avoiding the need to take the charger.

Whilst I do agree about the recommendation about getting a separate mp3 player, the advantages of the netbook are:
1) Way more storage space (160GB)
2) The ability to play any video or audio format.
3) The ability to watch videos (movies, tv shows, etc).

While mp3's can arguable play videos, I find the size of the screen way to small and the physical chore of holding it up at eye-level to be exhausting.

Sure, my netbook can play music and it does so just fine, but I always carry a music player with me. Why? Battery life and portability. Using the NetBook on the plane or in the hotel room would be fine but if I'm out and about I need something portable. And the battery life is fine on NetBooks as a portable computer system but it cannot match the battery life of a dedicated device.