Apple has been amazingly successful at winning over PC users and infiltrating their machines via iTunes, but with Windows Media Player 11 (WMP 11), Microsoft says "No more."

The new release, launched today as a beta download, beats Apple iTunes in many aspects. It acts as a repository and player for all your music, video, and images, unlike Apple's popular player. And while WMP 11 doesn't integrate with the iTunes Music Store, it also doesn't lock you in to one purchasing source. In fact, it integrates numerous stores including Napster, audible.com, Movielink, and MTV's new Urge service.

This release represents a major departure from the feel and navigation styles of WMP 10 and iTunes. With many other media players, you scroll through a list of files; WMP 11 lets you browse your library by cover. Some other players, like Yahoo! Music include the capability, but none do it as well. Bringing art to navigation makes the process much more appealing visually—your music collection no longer looks like a spreadsheet.

You'll also find the Word Wheel search technology Microsoft has implemented with Vista. Its speed is stunning—start to enter the first few letters of a track, album, or artist into the search bar, and the appropriate music will be waiting for you before you stop typing. Although iTunes has the same basic feature, seeing album art pop up is much more compelling than getting a list of tracks.

All Together Now

Navigation is also more unified than with iTunes, which still hasn't found a smooth way to integrate video files and podcasts into a general media library. With the Apple player, you use entirely different interfaces for the different media types. In WMP 11, though, the interface looks the same for all content types in all locations, so you browse, search, add, and delete photos no differently than music or videos. Searching for and editing content on portable devices works the same way as well. Windows Media Player 10 has a poorly integrated navigation system, so I'm pleased to see such a consistent one now.

During setup, the new media player searches your entire PC for compatible files and adds them to your library. If you're like me, though, you've got all kinds of cruddy audio files on your drive, and as happened with me, they'll end up in your library. I cleared out the whole list and started over, but on the second try, I specified the folders to be searched. The process wasn't as intuitive as iTunes' Add Folder command but was easy enough.

Once the player has built your library, the default view divides your music by album, with the artwork and artist info on the left, followed by track information. I love being able to browse by artwork, but in these days of Bit Torrents, indie music, and downloaded singles, large chunks of your collection will probably be missing such images. No worries: Half of my collection had no art, but when I started WMP the next day, Presto! It was magically there. Of course, if you don't want to browse by artwork, you can always use a simple List view.

In a few instances, WMP didn't find album art or had incomplete ID3 info, forcing me to search the database myself—a bit cumbersome, as I had to associate tracks to the album one by one. But as I did so, the software kept updating metadata, so most albums worked themselves out on their own. I was surprised by the depth of the ID3 catalog, supplied by All Music Guide. An album by my own band, Mere, automatically retrieved album art and ID3 info, despite having sold only 3,000 copies or so.

There was a hubbub a few months ago concerning privacy with the iTunes Mini Store because it phones home to transmit info about your listening (as do several of the popular players). For those with such concerns, the WMP 11 setup asks you if you'd like to disable the auto-connect capabilities, which are set on by default. At any time, you can turn off features that require connecting to the Internet.

The window layout is fairly straightforward. The familiar tree navigation, reminiscent of WMP 10 and iTunes, sits on the far left side and lets you select among views: Album, Artist, Song,, and others. Back and Forward buttons that look like those in Internet Explorer 7 reside at the top left and greatly simplify navigation.

Cheese and Other Features

The cheesy visualizations of the previous version remain—why, I don't know—and the equalizer is still just as hard to find. I was intrigued by the Display Lyrics and Captions option but wasn't able to get it to work, even when I chose ultra-poppy songs like The Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA," Michael Jackson's "Beat It," and Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone."

Windows Media Player 11 also includes easy-to-use ripping and burning features. You can compile and burn either audio or data CDs—you can even burn collections that span several discs. Very cool. I found the ripping options to be fairly extensive. You can rip to MP3, WAV, WMA (with several bit-rate options—full quality, variable bit rate, or up to 192 kbps). MP3 ripping maxes out at 320 kbps.

Syncing and loading portable players is much, much, much easier than with WMP 10, and is as smooth as what any of the other services, including iTunes, offer. Surprised? So was I. Getting music onto a portable player using the previous version was a truly awful experience, but this one lets you hook up your player, then simply drag files and drop them into the right-hand pane. As the media player scans your library, a meter lets you know how much room the device will have left when the files are copied onto it. When you get close to the limit, just hit sync to actually transfer the files.

The iTunes transfer feature has one advantage—it loads your device as you drag and drop, but that's the only way it's better. And there's a trade-off —WMP 11 lets you see what you're loading without switching views; iTunes doesn't. And with WMP 11's reverse sync you can easily get pictures or voice recordings off of your portable device and into your library. Still no iPod compatibility, though. If you've been holding your breath waiting for it, I'd exhale. It'll never happen.

As with music album covers, the folder view of photos shows the pictures in each folder in the form a virtual stack, with the top image visible. Clicking on a folder takes you inside. Clicking on an individual image blows it up to full size and starts a slide show of all the folder's images.

Microsoft still has some work to do before it launches Windows Media Player 11 for real. Metadata lookup could be faster, and the interface, while good, needs tweaking—for example, some of the buttons you use most often are too small. But this media player is a lot more fun to use than any other, and just as powerful. To check it out for yourself, go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/player/11 (the link will be live on Wednesday, May 17th).