Just to clarify, you are looking to record tracks FROM a CD? The term they use for that is ripping. It isn't really recording per se, since the music files on the CD are already digital. It is just copying the digital information to the computer's hard drive, usually as a .WAV file (on the PC).

Then you'll want to convert the WAV into an .MP3 file for listening and to save hard disk space and RAM usage while listening. There are lots of programs to do this out there. A search on Google for "mp3 encoder free" should provide a few links to a download. One I used to use on my old Win95 PC was called MP3 Workshop. It was freeware and worked beautifully, allowing me to easily and quickly encode WAV files as MP3s, batching them in pretty much any bitrate I wanted, including VBR (variable bit rate, where the bitrate changed as per the needs of the music on the fly). The higher the bitrate, the less the compression and thus the more fidelity to the original. The tradeoff: higher bitrates mean larger files.

But for playing through PC speakers, a bitrate of 128 is probably high enough. I wouldn't go much lower, unless you were just dealing with a single speaking voice, like say an old speech or comedy bit. Also, a low bitrate MP3 migfht be useful for "sample" purposes on a website, if you wanted to provide a little example of your own music.

There is also ripping software out there and some software that will do it all. For ripping, I usually just used the Easy CD Creator program that came with my CD-RW drive. Worked fine. In that, you highlighted the track you wanted to rip, clicked on the convert button, gave it a filename and saved it to the hard drive as a WAV file.