So I got a new PC and I’ve been playing with software to organize and play the 400 or so albums that I have sitting on my hard drive… Apple released iTunes for Windows a couple of weeks ago, but when I first tried it, the playback skipped — clearly unacceptable I knew it was some sound driver problem, and figured I’d leave it to the “open source” of others out there on the net to resolve it… sure enough, a Google today turned up How to Make iTunes for Windows Stop Skipping and now, thanks to Abe Fettig my iTunes is tuning. That said, we’ll have to see how it stands up to the competition. In the meantime, I’ve tried out WinAmp (2, 3, and beta 5), Quintessential Player, MusicMatch, Windows Media Player, Music Library, and a couple of others. They all have their flaws, but some are worse than others. I want a player that will display my album art both while browsing the library and also during playback (RealPlayer, Music Library). I also want to be able to hit “random” and play random tracks from my entire library (~RealPlayer), create temporary playlists easily (RealPlayer), and have the software automatically keep track of the last and most played (iTunes). Easy burning of both audio and mp3 CD’s is also key. Access to an online “music store” for downloading songs would be cool, but not critical yet. Interestingly, RealPlayer lacks a couple of cool iTunes features (last/most, and song ratings), but it displays album art and has a “now playing” temporary playlist UI that I like a lot. Although I’d like to like it better, iTunes’ UI doesn’t do much for me — maybe it’ll grow on me. For one, the “now playing” display is tiny. And I want my album covers!!! I’m sure someone will hack that in before long. By the way, I can’t figure out why so many people rate MusicMatch so highly — the UI is so horrible I can’t bear to look at it. I’d love to say that WinAmp rocks, but it’s unstable and really suffers from being split into two codelines. Maybe the “new” version will solve that… but I doubt it.