Bangin Choons (iTunes)

Member Name: Tybalt348

Product:	iTunes
Date:	19/03/03 (385 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, Great quality, Nice interface

Disadvantages: Apple only

I got iTunes 3 with my new iBook a few weeks ago. The short of this review is that iTunes is the best MP3 software I've ever seen.

The first thing you notice about it is the extremely clean, simple interface. Most things can be done with one click of the mouse button, such as importing CDs, burning CDs and so on. Imported files are automatically moved to the iTunes music folder in the folder on the HDD for your user name and as you add information to the tag such as Artist, Album and so on, it makes subfolders within that folder to categorise it nicely. Very smart.

Making playlists is nice and easy - you just add one to the list in the left part of the window and then drag the songs you want across from the main library. It's that simple. To burn all the songs in a playlist, you just click the "burn CD" icon and away it goes. The quality of audio it burns is excellent - a 160kbps MP3 burned to CD will sound very similar to the original CD quality.

What else? There's a great little search engine on iTunes that allows you to type in any parameters into a single text box and search for anything in the library. Like the rest of the program, it's very simple and very easy to use, but works excellently. Audio playback quality is excellent, much better than Windows media player or Winamp.

There is one minor niggle - it doesn't seem possible to load a file that was downloaded from the net into iTunes without double clicking on the icon. There's no facility to add an MP3 to the library from within iTunes. Not a major problem, but still a little annoying. It makes up for that with its "Consolidate Library" feature. Click on it and it copies all your music files to the iTunes folder, ready for use.

I'd rate iTunes as excellent. If you have an apple computer, don't bother looking for better MP3 software. If you don't have an apple, tough :)

Summary: