Moving from itunes to Winamp – Any pitfalls?

[Spudders]

I’ve been thinking of moving my media off of itunes for a while now & deleting it, will probably move to winamp. Before I do, are there any obvious bits of functionality I will lose out on?

 

I don’t need to do anything fancy, all I want my media player to do manage my music and allow me to move it on & off of my ipods & iphones which I know winamp CAN do.

 

I also understand I would be able to move photos from my iphones on to my computer without itunes so that’s not a problem.

 

Currently my iphone contacts are linked with outlook via itunes, so this is something I’ll need to look into & see if winamp does.

 

Anything obvious I’ve missed? I guess I won’t be able to manage apps with winamps so there would be no iphone back up if mine were to be lost/damaged.

 

Ah also iphone updates, I wouldn’t get them would I. Nuts, now I’m starting to think of some problems.

[sotonjoe]

Why?

[Spudders]

A few reasons:

I don’t like the way when you copy a CD, itunes converts the files to a low bitrate compromising some of the quality. Currently I’m copying my CD’s as flac files via winamp, which retains the CD quality (it does take up a lot more file space but that’s fine with me), but as iTunes doesn’t recognise flac I then have to convert those files to Apple Lossless format (which is their own version of flac) before I can get them into iTunes. Winamp would mean flac files could just stay in winamp.

 

I’m also having some problems with itunes where it’s doing a lot of stuff in the background & I don’t really know what! I just notice my pc slowing down a bit & when I look to see what’s going on via task manager, itunes is busy doing something. Itunes keeps telling me there’s a new version, but when I try & update it errors. I’ve already removed it & reinstalled & not been able to solve the problem. I also keep getting error messages pop up saying itunes can’t complete my request (I have no idea what request it’s updating but not completing?)

 

Also, when you install itunes & agree to the terms & conditions which most of us don’t read, you agree to allow Apple to collect & use data from your computer. They say they’ll preserve your anonymity & ultimately I don’t have anything highly sensitive on my computer, however it just bugs me a bit when I hear my computer doing stuff & I know its apple building up more data. For my job I do a bit of work in the social media space & on the one hand its fascinating what sort of info is being collected on us all now & what can be done with it, but on the other hand it’s a bit intrusive in my opinion, & when it slows down my computer performance which hampers the speed I can look at ladyboys & granny porn then I’m not so happy with that!