Digital music is on the rise.  Now that your laptop can hold more music than an entire closet full of CDs, you probably listen to quite a bit of music on your computer.  But what program should you be using?  If you use a PC, chances are that you’re pretty familiar with Windows Media Player.  If you use a Mac, likewise for iTunes.  But now iTunes is available for PCs and HP manufactures ipods.  Has Apple gone and rendered Windows Media Player obsolete?  Well, that depends on your taste and needs.  Here are some relative pros and cons. 

Layout and Appearance

On first glance, iTunes is surely the more accessible looking program.  The virtual buttons are bigger and the organization of your music library is more immediately apparent.  But if you want iTunes to look any different, you’re stuck.  WMP on the other hand comes with lots of different skins and lets you download more if you so desire.  With only a little bit of use, WMP becomes just as intuitive as iTunes appears to be, and is much more customizable.

Playback

For some reason, iTunes can’t seem to play any number of songs in a row without adding a split-second pause in between the tracks.  This might sound like a negligible short-coming, and it’s true that much of time that gap is unnoticeable, considering that many tracks come to a full stop before the next one begins.  But any true music fan is familiar with albums that put lots of thought into the transition between tracks.  When listening to such music, the gap is not only jarring but annoying.  I keep thinking that the latest version of iTunes will have fixed this problem, but now I’ve been waiting for over a year.  WMP just doesn’t seem to suffer in this category.