iTunes 7 has become completely unusable.

Everything used to be fine (iTunes 6), but with the latest upgrade, iTunes pegs the processor(s) at 100%, becomes very sluggish, won't respond to mouse or keyboard, etc. If a song is playing, it manages to keep playing the song without skipping, but that's about it.

At first I thought my WinXP system might be to blame: At almost 4 years old, I assumed it was time for the customary blow-away-your-entire-configuration-and-rebuild-from-scratch that Windows systems generally need every few years.

Luckily, having just built up a fresh Vista system, I simply installed iTunes over there. iTunes still performed horribly. A quick Google search indicates that I am not alone in my suffering.

I noticed that performance was '''really''' bad when it first imported my media library due to iTunes' gapless playback analysis. But that's all finished now, and iTunes is still messed up.

Based on Zack's recommendation, I'm going to give Media Monkey a try. I've become pretty dependent on iTunes over the last few years, but no matter how great it is, if I can't use it then it's worthless to me!

How come iTunes doesn't have a keyboard shortcut to select the search box in the upper right hand corner? I just checked the official list of shortcuts, and they have things like "listen to the next album in a list" (Shift-Control-Alt-Right Arrow), but no way to do one of the most simple and common tasks like searching? I'm a keyboard guy. I like to avoid the mouse as much as possible. Unfortunately, with iTunes, I am forced to use the mouse way more than I should have to. I am not impressed for a company like Apple who claims to have a focus on usability (i.e., what if I couldn't use a mouse due to physical accessibility issues). In contrast, one thing that always impresses me with Microsoft products is that they have keyboard accelerators for every single little thing. Every app, every time.

I've gotta give credit to Apple for their podcasting support in the most recent iTunes update. They've done a great job and I think there will be a substantial rise in podcasting's popularity and "mainstream adoption" as a result. I've already listened to a couple episodes of Northwest Noise, one episode of TinyPodcast, and a few episodes of some podcast done by airline pilot -- all on my iPod as I've been walking around town, thanks to the seamless iTunes integration. Now, if only NPR would get on the bandwagon and start offering some podcasts...