It's funny how life works.
I was transferring some music from my Zen to a friend's laptop last night and he had both WMP11 and iTunes - which one started quicker? WMP11.
Well, I guess that's varies from user to user. iTunes and WMP11 started pretty much at the same time back when I was on Windows. Of course I have no way to prove that now since my old PC is sitting in a dumpster somewhere (I know! I should have recycled it. I'm a horrible person.).
Why had he iTunes installed? Because his sister has an iPod and they couldn't get it to work with any other software. He hates both the iPod and iTunes and he's a 'mediocre' computer user (an unfortunate term).
They couldn't get it to work? Wow. Do you know how many alternatives there are to iTunes that do work with the iPod? Even Real Player works with it. Maybe her iPod not working with other software was an isolated case, or maybe they were just complete idiots. I've had roughly six iPods over the last three years, and all of them
have worked with iTunes, Real Player, Anapod, EphPod, Winamp, and Foobar (I've tried a lot. I stuck with iTunes since I felt it gave me the smoothest experience).
iTunes installs a service - WMP11 doesn't. iTunes installs a startup app - WMP11 doesn't. iTunes keeps taking over the file associations every time you use it - WMP11 doesn't. iTunes installs Quicktime - WMP11 doesn't.
You can uninstall iTunes. You can't WMP11. Well, you can roll back to a previous version, but you can never truly get rid of it. Well, I mean you can, but it's a really fucked up process. You can pretty much turn off the iTunes Music Store. As for the file associations, get another program to keep them in check. On second thought, why would you use iTunes if you don't want it to keep all the files associated? I don't get it. It's not like VLC player where you use it to watch porn videos you download, watch, and then delete. iTunes is meant to keep your media library organized. Duh, it's going to keep taking over file associations.
Quicktime installs a startup app and it installs an updater app that runs in the background.
Both those things can be disabled. One through the preferences menu in Quicktime and the other through msconfig or using something like Spybot.
So - if you install iTunes as given to you from the Apple website - you get a new service, two updater apps and two startup apps whereas with WMP11 I get a fairly stable multimedia player that I can tell not to mess with my system and it doesn't.
Look, in the end iPod+iTunes is an ecosystem. It's simple, and it works exactly like it should. I mean, there are a few things that still need to be worked out (.qt/.mov only? Really?), but you're kidding yourself if you think WMP is any better.
But it does affect it does it?
Actually, I was wrong to say it wouldn't affect it significantly. It's non-essential to iTunes.
I'm done.
ok thanks guys i have seen all of your suggestions and will try some. but as for wmp11 dont know maybe i will just see what i can do with my current one but thanks anyway
If you're going to stick to WMP, you really should upgrade to WMP11. It's gorgeous if nothing else. And it works a lot better than all the previous versions. If you don't like it, you can just roll back to 10 (At least you could with the beta. I'm not sure now.). But do try it.
