iTunes has changed my life...

[tazo]

heh, yes the title is a bit exagerrated -- but...

Ever since the beginning of November I have been running windows 2000 pro smoothly, only having to reboot to install software/service packs..etc.

Included in 2000, is the ability to use iTunes for windows, and it has changed my life.

Before iTunes, I used to be a strong proponent of using kazaa, or similar service. I thought I was sticking it to someone, that someone gave a damn if I didn't buy -- I was wrong.

So now I have iTunes, and it is soo much better than WMP. I download songs from the music store whenever I hear one "I really like" from local radio, or one on one of the plethora of radio stations -- I am up to 6 in total bought!

"Jonny Sabatino" -- buy it on iTunes if you like jazz-type music, very cool beat. I just had to buy it after hearing it on iTunes radio.

Apple, I proudly support you.

:-)

[scem0]

It is great and all, but they need to offer a whole catalog thing like Napster and they need to improve the GUI which is increadibly slow on my 2.4 GHz p4.

But, yeah, iTunes pwns all other music players.

scem0

[tazo]

i am running itunes on a 700mhz pc, with 384 ram, and the only time it seems to slow down is when i have it open like from the time i get home till the time i go to sleep, and try and buy a song then ;) then it starts to slow down a bit. Than again i usuaully have firebird, photoshop, aim, and folding@home on at the same time as welll...

And I would rather have a slowish itunes than that horrifying UI that is Napster. Man, opening stuff in new windows, poor selection of the music I like, fact that it aint iTunes, harder to sign up...

[scem0]

Its just really slow when you are trying to resize windows, or when you type in the 'search' box in the upper right when you are searching for a song in the library.

There are also lots of errors like when I am on starcraft and I minimize. The iTunes windows turns all black and sometimes if I try to play a song it will play a wierd sound and then iTunes will crash. I don't know what that's all about.

To me, the only problem is a buggy, slow GUI compared to WMP, Winamp, or even MMJB.

scem0

[sonofslim]

i was monkeying around with my folks' computer over thanksgiving, trying to rip a few CDs, and Musicmatch was giving me the hardest time EVER. didn't help that they're running Win98 (no, for real; i opened the case and there was a little Flintstone's lizard in there, running the show) and so nothing is going to work right.

but i also tried doing the same thing on a brand-new XP box, and Musicmatch still sucked one. from what i gathered (no reason to poke around too much) it seems Musicmatch actually cripples your rip speed until you buy the full version -- is this true? man, what crap. i left firm instructions for the XP user to get iTunes and the Win98 users to simply throw out their machine.

bottom line: yes, iTunes is a fantastically fantastical program, especially compared to some of its alternatives... yikes!!

[SiliconAddict]

I’ve spent about $130 on iTMS. And that is only in the last few months it’s been available for the PC. I think all told I've only spent about $300 on CD's in my life.
The majority of the purchases is to replace the pirated songs I've gotten over the years. Dang do I have a long way to go on that task.
About 80% of my collection are from er…umm questionable sources *looks at something interesting on his shoe*

[SiliconAddict]

Originally posted by sonofslim


but i also tried doing the same thing on a brand-new XP box, and Musicmatch still sucked one. from what i gathered (no reason to poke around too much) it seems Musicmatch actually cripples your rip speed until you buy the full version -- is this true? man, what crap. i left firm instructions for the XP user to get iTunes and the Win98 users to simply throw out their machine.

bottom line: yes, iTunes is a fantastically fantastical program, especially compared to some of its alternatives... yikes!!

I use MM to rip all my CD's into MP3 files. Never had a problem. It was even better after I purchased the full version. (Needed the MP3 tagging utility that comes with MM.) :confused:

[sonofslim]

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
I use MM to rip all my CD's into MP3 files. Never had a problem. It was even better after I purchased the full version.

i wouldn't say i had a problem, per se, but MMJB basic does limit you to 4x rip speed and a certain number of burns. i understand they need to make money off their product, but unfortunately their competition is fully functional, blessed with the apple interface, and free. i suppose i can't fault MM for not living up to another company's standards, but side-by-side, there's no comparison in my mind.

[rueyeet]

Originally posted by scem0
There are also lots of errors like when I am on starcraft and I minimize. The iTunes windows turns all black and sometimes if I try to play a song it will play a wierd sound and then iTunes will crash. I don't know what that's all about.

In my earlier Windows experience that kind of thing was caused by two apps fighting over system resources that weren't properly relinquished to the current active program, like the sound card. Could just as easily be a problem with Starcraft's programmers writing as if their program was assumed to be the only one running (or the most important) as a problem with iTunes.

It's a pity that such basics as the search and resize are slow, though from Tazo's description of his system and everything he's running concurrent with iTunes, it could be your system. As I recall from the desktop threads, you've got a lot of stuff on there.

[scem0]

Originally posted by sonofslim
i was monkeying around with my folks' computer over thanksgiving, trying to rip a few CDs, and Musicmatch was giving me the hardest time EVER. didn't help that they're running Win98 (no, for real; i opened the case and there was a little Flintstone's lizard in there, running the show) and so nothing is going to work right.

but i also tried doing the same thing on a brand-new XP box, and Musicmatch still sucked one. from what i gathered (no reason to poke around too much) it seems Musicmatch actually cripples your rip speed until you buy the full version -- is this true? man, what crap. i left firm instructions for the XP user to get iTunes and the Win98 users to simply throw out their machine.

bottom line: yes, iTunes is a fantastically fantastical program, especially compared to some of its alternatives... yikes!!

MMJB is the worst software ever. Thats why next to nobody uses it. Yeah they do slow down the rip speeds. I've never ripped from them before, but I'm not suprised its a pain. I was sorely dissapointed with how the music is organized, same goes for winamp.





I'm sure its not just my machine making it act slow; Pretty much every review talks about how slow and what a resource stealer iTunes is:
When I tried Winamp3 for the first time I was disappointed by the slow start up, and large amount of resources used. The same is true for iTunes on my 1.2Ghz machine with 512Mb of ram it takes at least 4 seconds to start. And when it is up it consumes over thirty MB’s of ram. Winamp2 on the other hand launches instantly, and uses six MB’s. Not only does it use thirty MB’s of Ram, but it also starts a iPod windows service, which consumes more resources than Winamp2 does!
Resizing the iTunes window is insanely slow - 100% CPU usage, and it takes a quarter to half second just for the screen to update while resizing the window. Oh yes, and if the Music Store is open? It takes, I kid you not, more than a second for the screen to update while resizing. The resizing performance seems to increase a little when the window gets small, which implies that the entire iTunes window is being buffered offscreen (which probably explains some of the RAM usage too.) I also noticed that dragging the volume slider would peg my CPU at 100%. I don't have a low-end machine, and I can only imagine how horribly slow iTunes must be on older machines. On one hand, though, iTunes didn't seem to lag when playing music and things like that. Switching playlists/views on the Source sidebar usually took between a half second and two seconds. Playing a 96KBPS MP3 radio stream used an average of ~8-12% CPU usage, which while not terrible is a lot more than Winamp uses to do the equivalent on my system. The iTunes visualizer averages a decent framerate of around 30FPS, so it looks smooth, but it obviously pegs the CPU.
iTunes uses around 40 MB of RAM on my WinXP SP1 machine, with no music files in my library and nothing playing. Add in the iPod driver and the iTunesHelper app that it runs in the background, and you've probably got around ~60MB of RAM usage on average. Winamp uses 8-10 megs in comparison.

Winamp 3 uses more than that, and also tends to pin the CPU at 100% for no good reason that I can see. Winamp 2 is better but does not offer anywhere close to the same functionality as either iTunes or Winamp 3 (some of this functionality is useless for a lot of people, so I'm not saying this automatically makes iTunes a better product).

Resizing the iTunes window is insanely slow - 100% CPU usage, and it takes a quarter to half second just for the screen to update while resizing the window.

I noticed this too, on two quite powerful machines to boot - one an Athlon XP 2600+ w/ GeForce 4 Ti4200, one a P4-2.6 w/ Radeon 9800 Pro. These are the kinds of machines that can run Unreal II with frame rates in the 100's, and yet just dragging the corner of the iTunes window is choppy as hell. No excuse for this. It's like they're just not using hardware acceleration at all.

So apparently I'm not the only one experiencing this slowness. I'm on a 2.4GHz pent 4 and it isnt increadibly slow, but there is lag in between when you click the resize button to when it starts moving. It is just really slow for most GUI things compared to Winamp, MMJB, and other music programs.

Its still a much better program though, just a much slower program.

scem0

[gwuMACaddict]

iTunes is amazing... just wait till you guys get to college and can share music with 30 different people on your local network. my brother usually has between 25 and 50 people sharing at once. and all the kids use their sharing names to meet people- ie using screen names or dorm room numbers. he got a date once cause the chick dug his music. this is why steve jobs rocks my socks!

long live apple and steve-o

:D

[scem0]

How does that work exactly?

Can you search through others people's music? Like if you were connected to 30 different hosts on a LAN and you wanted to find all songs by evanescence would you have to browse through each person or could you do a collective search amongst all the other hosts?

scem0

[tazo]

my computer hasnt been very bad overall -- especially after upgrading to WIN2K. My only complaint is applying filters in photoshop, which can take up to 2min! Crazy....

[gwuMACaddict]

Originally posted by scem0
Can you search through others people's music? Like if you were connected to 30 different hosts on a LAN and you wanted to find all songs by evanescence would you have to browse through each person or could you do a collective search amongst all the other hosts?


have to browse through each person as far i can tell... its sweet though