What I don't like is "Microsoft". I'm not saying these are bad products - WMP12 thus far is quite good - I'm just saying it's hard for me to suddenly overlook the years of sucking Microsoft's balls I was forced to endure.
Libraries ... aha, well I've actually entirely removed their existence in explorer through some drastic hacky measures. Old fashioned, yeah. I have my own preferences for file organization (as opposed to "My Computer, My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, My Videos", etc "user" directories) and made the decision long ago to not reorganize my digital life every time a new OS comes along. The downside is less instant happy integration with the new toys; the upside is quick "migration" into any OS simply involves a drive transfer.
I tell ya though, WMP is gonna be toast the first time it ever attempts to deny playback or stamp DRM metadata onto any one of my files or start calling the mothership for suspiciously unauthorized reasons. It looks good but Microsoft hasn't earned my trust.
Yeah, Media Center and a remote sounds good; I'll try out the setup in my living room, it probably works better than Winamp/XP.
You do realize you can change the locations of these libraries now...and add your own. Its built right into windows 7.
I have my music/videos/documents saved on an external hd. So i can hit "my documents" and it will take me to like F:\Data\Documents. I also added a few of my own libraries such as my portfolio library, my game design library and my website library.
So if im working on a texture in photoshop and i want to save something really quick i can just hit save as and then select my game design lib from the list of libraries and im taken directly to my game design dir on my F drive as well.
I save nothing to the drive where windows is installed. Makes reformatting a breeze. Though i do use windows 7's backup and restore system too, i set all my game design work stuff, website stuff etc all to be backed up and compressed every day to my external in-case something happens.
I will agree microsoft used to suck hardcore, and parts of what they do now still do suck but they have come a long way to redeeming themselves with Windows 7, Windows Phone 7, and I'm told Xbox Live is great too. But I have no xbox360 to confirm.
Edit: And as far as checking in with the mother ship...just make sure you are dealing with MP3s and not WMAs and you shouldn't have a problem. Go to wmp, then go to the organize dropdown, then to options. Go to the rip music tab and make sure its set to mp3, then if you want pop over the the privacy tab uncheck anything you dont like.
I left all of mine default in privacy and ive never had any issues with any DRM at all.
