After a year or so using other solutions, I’ve re-installed iTunes on the desktop machine at home, and have been re-acquainting myself with it. If you’re one of the people that continually bitches and moans about iTunes, I have one thing to say to youshut up.
Over the past few months, I’ve used Windows Media Player, Media Monkey, Songbird, Rhythm Box, and Banshee. None of them is as good as iTunes at a few key things;Organising music files into artists / album foldersLooking after podcast subscriptionsSwitching from the Sansa Clip+ back to the iPod Nano has been interesting. While the Nano user interface and sync process is light years ahead of the Clip+, the Clip+ wins for use on the bike because it has physical buttons in places your fingers can learn; so you can adjust volume, or change tracks without looking at it. The “clip” is sorely missed from the Nano toomeaning you musthave a pocket to tuck it in.
I still have an old iPod Shuffle, so perhaps that will become the cycling media player insteadalthough I usually listen to podcasts while commuting to and from work on the mountain bikeand of course the Shuffle has no way of choosing a particular track.