My dad got lucky and won a 512-MB iPod shuffle in a raffle. Naturally, my younger sister went agog over it and protested when my dad announced that he’s giving it as a present to my mom. Even my younger brother and older sister were quite excited as well. In the end, my siblings got what they wanted and now they share it among themselves.

Although I said that the iPod’s not for me, I’ll admit that I played with the shuffle a few times. It’s a very, very stylish little piece of music player. It’s extremely light and very easy to use. I even joked that since my computer was the only device in the house that has USB ports whatsoever, I should be the one who wields the iPod. Hehehe.

Enough of the iPod. What I like better is the bundled iTunes 4.7 digital jukebox software. Compared with Windows Media Player 9 that came with the OS, iTunes is quite better. (For one, WMP couldn’t rip to MP3s without a plug-in.) I’ve played with WMP9 when I installed the OS and I find it clunky and cluttered. It provided far too many features that I couldn’t be bothered to use (like the skins) and its Media Library browser is a bit of a chore to use.

Using the iTunes, on the other hand, is a much more pleasant experience, not only can I rip my CDs to MP3s, the user interface is much, much simpler than WMP, as only Apple does it.

I’ve looked at Windows Media Player 10 on its website and boy it looks sweet. It’s certainly more XP-ish than its predecessor and since it can now rip CDs to MP3, I might consider it as a feasible music management application.

Anyway, there are tons of jukebox software out there, like Winamp 5.09, Musicmatch Jukebox 10, and even Real Player, but you really wouldn’t want to install every one of those just to find out which is the best. So it’s iTunes for me for the meantime.