I’m not a big iTunes fan but it does rip albums and collect tag data.
I would suggest you change your Import settings. The default is m4a to keep you in the Apple universe, but you can change it to mp3 and your imported albums will then play everywhere.
In my iTunes 10 on Windows, I go to Edit/Preferences/Advanced (different from the Advanced tab shown on the opening screen) and General and look for Import Settings about halfway down, where it says When you insert a CD.
Change Import Using to : MP3 Encoder and the bitrate to Custom to the highest, 320 (160 per channel). That will give you high-quality mp3s that will play everywhere. The lower bitrates were for the days when there was much less storage available.
iTunes 11 may have moved stuff around, so if that path doesn’t work, go into Help and see where Apple hid Import Settings in the newer version. They make it devious so you’ll stay with the Apple defaults.
Delete one of your imported CDs and try those settings and see if the imported files play on your computer.
When you send them to the Sansa, see if the tags (Album, Artist, etc) are displayed correctly. If not, get mp3tag (for WIndows) or KID3 (for Mac), links in my previous post, and run the mp3 files through those to fix the tags.
Here’s a better KID3 link–other one seems down.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kid3/
Mac installers are here if you need them. I think they are the tar.gz or .dmg files.
