It may seem harsh to say that iTunes 5 is retarded, but I mean it literally. iTunes 5 was a step backward for me.

Version 5 installs a service named Bonjour (apparently a renamed Rendevouz), which is supposed to help with music sharing. The problem is, it acts as a DNS server of some kind, can interfere with local networking that relies on DHCP (which 99% do), and--oh, I hate this part--prevents the program from seeing shared playlists.

On my network, I keep all my music on my laptop, share the playlist using password protection, then connect to it from my "multi-media PC". (Which is an old computer I use to watch movies and not much else).

After installing iTunes 5, whamo! no sharing.

I'm back to version 4.8. Fortunately, the upgrade to 5 puts the previous playlist in a backup directory. Terrible waste of about an hour.

Did Apple not have any Windows users test upgrading to version 5? Surely they have a beta program?

I use iTunes because:
* I like how the interface organizes/filters by genre,album and artist.
* I can easily rip CDs to a higher quality MP3.
* I can share, passord protected, my laptop's library.

Any suggestions on a free, better alternative? (Not Windows Media Player.)

More info:

Dave Seidel

Something about sharing and the Radio feature

Various bits of info

Good info, links to an Apple forum