Alternatives to iTunes?

[Jabbs]

Hi guys (and gals)

Twice in the last six months I've had to fix a friends PC due to iTunes and Quicktime misbehaviours.  They are overweight and do not remove themselves properly when uninstalling.

Both times, the applications were uninstalled but upon attempting to reinstall I either had a quicktime installation error or, once installation had finished iTunes failed to load with the good old:

   'There was an error loading iTunes, sorry blah blah. Do you want to send an error report'

Well no I don't want to send a report! I just want the program to work! :ranting2:

Anyway, the first time I got the program to work by removing every entry relating to quicktime in the Windows Registry (using Registry Crawler to delete multiple entries in one go).

Today though this failed and no matter what I did it just wouldn't play ball.

Reinstalling Windows was not an option in this case.

So, has anyone here had any experience of alternatives to iTunes for managing their iPod?

I notice a few on this page but I have no idea what they are like.  Can someone let me know what they use if they don't use iTunes?

Thanks in advance

[Zootoxin]

This is why I wont pay over the odds for an Ipod and its terrible software.
Not much help I know, I did try songbird as a mp3 player but didn't think it was very robust.

[Jabbs]

This is why I wont pay over the odds for an Ipod and its terrible software.
Not much help I know, I did try songbird as a mp3 player but didn't think it was very robust.

Agreed, in my experience the software is terrible - bloated and problematic.

[TE_owner]

i would'ent touch the ipod with a 50 foot barge pole i've got a mp4 player which is good get vids on it hard though

[Jabbs]

I would agree not to have one but the problem is my customers do and the software doesn't work!

Therefore I need an alternative - I could download and try them but I'd rather get input here first

[Thulsa Doom]

I think ipods are a great piece of kit, especially the Touch.
I like mine, I touch it often.

However the PC software does suck.

[Lexander]

I think ipods are a great piece of kit, especially the Touch.
I like mine, I touch it often.

However the PC software does suck.

QFT

All I could find is http://www.ephpod.com/ , http://www.gtkpod.org/about.html , http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/home/
But the article was a bit old, you might need to look more at those pages to figure out if it works in your case.

[Lee]

I've never used Songbird but it seems to get mentions now and again and it's made by Mozilla so should be decent I guess. Seems Zootoxin thinks differently though, but maybe some recent updates have improved it.

[smilodon]

I use a combination of winamp on Pc and Amarok on Linux. I think atunes and songbird have windows versions although I've never used them

atunes
songbird  
winamp

[Penfold]

I've got a couple of ipod's and an iphone and have never had a problem with itunes.

Sure, I'd rather find an alternative but it ok at what it does in my experience.

[Liberator]

I have SharePod sat on mine so that I can use it on any computer without using iTunes and without having to install anything.

It runs from the iPod itself as a stand alone binary with a temporary library file that it creates and allows you to take music back off your iPod in a properly formatted name.

No good for podcasts or iTunes store, but for putting music on and, more importantly, taking it off again for use elsewhere, it's great and doesn't need to be installed.

[Jabbs]

Thanks guys - I'll check out Sharepod, atunes and Songbird

[T-Bag]

Songbird is probably the closest looking to iTunes I've found. But even though I don't have an iPod I can't shift away from iTunes. Appearence wise and for ease of use it's the best player out there. Auto-updating and cocking up it's on registry it's one of the worst. It does it pretty much constantly.
Even though I got it set to not update automatically it still does. I just wish I could bring myself to use the others. I tested songbird about 4 months back and it still wasn't quite there.

[Snokio]

Never owned an I-pod, but I just use good old fashioned amazon for me downloadable MP3's, they are meant to under cut I-tunes and you can play them on any device and burn them onto CD with no problems

[Gh0st Face Killah]

http://www.junodownload.com/
http://www.beatport.com

For dance music mp3s

As an alternative to Quicktime try quicktime alternative

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/quicktime_alternative.htm