As I wrote in my previous post; Apple upset me pretty bad with it's iPhone update. Also, iTunes' horrible performance on Vista leaves nothing to be desired. The iPhone update was the final straw for me. I have decided to ditch iTunes for a new music player. To read about the nightmare of completely uninstalling iTunes from your computer check out "iTunes Uninstall Hassle". I have been an iTunes user for many years. So choosing a new player is not going to be easy. Many trials and tribulations are ahead in this quest. I have decided to document my findings as I go along.

After digging around I have narrowed it down to four different players. The four in the running are Winamp, Quintessential player (which is an OSS player), jetAudio, and even (cough.. cough) Windows Media Player. It is important to keep in mind that I have been very lazy in my media player research over the years because of the iTunes crutch. In coming posts I will outline the good, the bad, and the ugly of each application and share my experiences with you.

VLC Video LAN Media Player

VLC is my video player of choice and I hope it always will be. I use VLC a lot! Especially when I want to quickly open a music file or watch video. VLC is great because it is going to play basically every media file type you can think of without having to search for and install a bunch of codecs and plug-ins. The customization options are endless, you can really tweak every aspect of the video your playing. I cannot say enough good things about VLC as a video player. However as a primary music player I need more. VLC just does not offer all the functions I want out of a primary music jukebox.