So, after much nagging of my sister's boyfriend, I have started the switch from Windows Media Player to iTunes for Windows...

I started getting irritated by WMP, cuz the new version SUCKS and the old version is not updated anymore and started to hick up.

So, are there any Orgers that have experience with both and can point out the pro's and cons of both systems to me?

Let me point out what I liked about the previous WMP. I have an extensive collection of songs, around 35.000. I love them listed in lines, so I can arrange them by title or artist.

For all the next options I name, can iTunes users tell me if this option also exists in iTunes?

I have the option to click one group of songs and change all their fields (like album title).

Is it possible to change the LOOK of iTunes? I think you call them skins. Actually, I kinda like the look, but the gray colour is getting to me. Can I just change the colour?

The off-setting thing about iTunes is that it seems that it needs to CHANGE my WMP files to MP3's to be able to play them. My first import batch is taking like HOURS already, while my WMP had an option to play everything I chose it to play.

So, tell me what you like and dislike about one or the other! Love to hear your input!

HamsterHuey said:

This reminds when I switched to iTunes

[Edited 1/9/07 13:41pm]

HamsterHuey said:

I have no input on this other than to echo your sentiment - that new WMP is terrible! Nothing about it is intuitive. It feels like they were obsessed with bells and whistles and had zero interest in making it actually functional. Irritating.

What really bugs me about iTunes is the conversion of wma files

MikeMatronik said:

That is not so much of a problem; I already started converting my newly ripped cd's to MP3 format anyways...

But the first batch of 970 songs will take 2.6 days to convert...

SIGH

Pro iTunes; I love the way the page hops to the song Itunes is playing when you use shuffle, something lacking in WMP.

I gave up. Bleeding iTunes is busy for AGES to convert my WMA files. It is just too much.

Unles some of you tell me to hang in there cuz there is a bounty on the other side of all this stress...?

HamsterHuey said:

have you tried www.oldversion.com for the previous versions of WMP, or are you finding all of them too buggy?

My five-year-old copy of WinAmp works just fine.

novabrkr said:

I'm a WinAmp proponent as well.

Foobar would be excellent, but at least my copy fails to detect wma. Maybe there's a plug-in somewhere though.

Foobar is great. 100% customizable, plays every file type and there's never any lag. I love it.

Oh, it burns gapless too...not like ITunes gapless burning where there's an ever-so breif moment of silence, it's TOTALLY gapless.
[Edited 1/10/07 15:35pm]

WMP 10 all the way.

I didn't like it at first, but now I have got used to it, I love it. Its much more powerful than WMP 9 and Itunes.

I decided to get rid of Itunes as its too controlling. Its the big brother of the PC world.....

Oh, damn, Winamp. Forgot about that one.

I think I will stick to WMP 9...

TommyRoss said:

I re-installed wmp9, after my sad experience with WMP10.

FruitToAttractBears said:

iTunes burns gapless as well. The problems were fixed months back.