I use 192 kbps VBR MP3 (set to "Highest" quality). My songs end up averaging closer to 200-210 kbps.
As for using 192 kbps AAC or MP3 instead of lossless... well, obviously it's going to take up a lot less space. The sound quality will be lower, but many people can't tell the difference unless they have good sound equipment. I won't make too many strong judgments because this is a hotly contested area.
As alcimedes said, lossless files will play on your iPod, but they won't play as well. There may be gaps in the middle of long songs as the iPod refills its buffer (normally the iPod loads several songs into its buffer, but with lossless you are likely to encounter song files that are larger than the iPod's entire buffer). Also, it'll eat up battery life because lossless files work on the principal of data compression, and the iPod will have to do a lot of on-the-fly decompression in order to play the song.
If you have all the original CDs, I'd say keep them around and encode your music at 192-256 kbps MP3 or AAC. That'll provide good quality (most people wouldn't be able to distinguish it from a CD, though again this is contested) and it won't take up much space. You can always re-encode the songs at a higher bitrate (or in lossless) from the original CDs if you find you want higher quality. If you do encode in lossless, it might be a good idea to also keep a separate collection of smaller MP3 or AAC files for use with your iPod.
As for MP3 vs. AAC... well, supposedly AAC is a little higher quality at the same bit rate, but on the other hand MP3 is incredibly compatible with everything. Basically, if you encode in AAC, you'll be limited to playing the encoded music from your computer and your iPod. For many people that's fine, but some people like to be able to transfer music to a different MP3 player (one that doesn't necessarily support AAC) or burn their music to an MP3 CD for their car stereo. A lot of higher-end car stereo decks now have MP3 CD capability. If you use AAC, you'll have to burn plain audio CDs, which means you can only have 15-25 songs per CD. An MP3 CD can hold 100-150 songs, encoded in MP3.
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