After reading the hype about MS WMP11, I'm really underwhelmed. It's still wildly unusable for large music collections - too much space used onscreen for too little content. The album view is improved, and it's adequate for people with a few dozen albums or a few hundred songs. I can't imagine managing more files than that with WMP11. I read a lot about increased database speed, but so far it's erratic - slow to switch from one view to another (genre to artist, say) but fast to return search results. MC is fast across the board.
MC's ability to switch between panes and album views; the ability to display a file list below an album view; and the action window for tag info - easy, necessary, and missing from WMP11.
I think the WMP 11 gets more and better content onscreen (for playback). It doesnt do as much as MC but what it does it does way faster and better. Its not a powertool like MC.
"In its internal studies, Microsoft determined that libraries of 10,000 tracks or more are now typical rather than the exception to the rule. Thus, WMP 11 is engineered to handle not only thousands but also millions of tracks" -- News.com
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-6526496.html?tag=cnetfd.sdStill not close to being a MC-replacement, but faster to browse if you have a large collection.
And i wonder how well the new advanced audio fingerprinting system works.
Update:
They have some serious issues reading tags right, if displayed in extended view with coverart, albums are split up. But it somehow fixes its mistakes, would like to know what is going on in the background here. Does it asume or use data from AMG to correct?
And it randomly fails to read the artist tag and recycle the album tag as the artist.(beta)
It only tells you how many albums from each artist if you have more than 6(if 6 or less, its displayed in the stack)
Sometimes it can update tags from AMG, and sometimes it dont, even if the info is there.
But on the other hand this is the fastest media
player with the "best" user interface I have ever used.
And the last.fm plugin is working!
Now lets see what apple can do about this, they cant let ms have the best mediaplayer...