I just want to say that using Windows Media Player 12 in Windows 7 is a terrific experience. Firstly the music files actually open immediately. This is far from the Windows Vista experience where it takes roughly 300 ms to open an MP3 file. You may think dude it’s just 300 ms but these things matters. The library is also more responsive.

I never understood what the cute colors meant:

(Windows Media Player library.)

I noticed the album finder got better too:

(Finding album information in Windows Media Player.)

(Finding more album information in WMP.)

Can’t find a full match? Windows Media Player suggest some changes to song titles.

(Finding more album information in WMP and matching more metadata.)

I also noticed the integration. Windows Media Player no longer lets you specify where your music library is at. Any folder you add to your Explorer’s Library locations in Music would be found by Windows Media Player. I can imagine how RealPlayer and iTunes can benefit from this too. But then again iTunes probably won’t play nice. You can also view the Music Library in album or artists and it would consolidate your music from all around. The design makes a lot of sense.

(My Music Library in Windows 7.)

Windows Media Player 12 is a huge improvement. I supposed it may be Windows 7 only but it’s starting to make me feel that I am missing out a lot by using iTunes which just don’t play nice with Windows that much.