Windows 7 Software Compatibility Testing - iTunes 9

iTunes is a popular multimedia player and manager developed by Apple which is now available in its ninth version. For a complete review on this piece of freeware please take a look at this article on HandyWare. However, just to take a quick look at iTunes' novelties I must tell you that version 9 brings some very intersting innovations, the greatest world multimedia store has been redesigned: it is now much cleaner, images have gained prominence giving it an overall more modern look. Undoubtedly this was a good twist, moreover, we can also mention the structural problems that entailed expanding content of the store.

Genius Mixes have also been improved, iTunes will now create up to 12 automatic playlists (mixes) with the music we have in our library. They have also added support for Facebook and Twitter, for us to share the records that we like with our friends. We can also sync music from iTunes on up to 5 computers at once. There were already some third party tools to achieve this, but it's much better if it is built-in, isn't it?.

Last but not least, the best news for me is that iPhone / iPod device management has been greatly enhanced. Now music can be configured for each device, in a much more specific way. Most outstanding is the applications management, being able to arrange them by dragging and dropping directly from the interface; this is a very good improvement that we were clamoring as it is a heavy task to move applications from screen to screen.

So, I have downloaded and installed iTunes 9 under Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 7, in order to test its performance under this environment and thus be able to tell you about it.

Installation & First Run
I must tell you that i was not surprised to find that iTunes installation process resulted to be quick and easy, not a single complication, delay or difficult decisions to be taken, everything was resolved in four steps. As I said no surprises if we have in mind that this is an Apple product.

First of all i was shown the Welcome window, clickin the next button took me to the License agreement.

The next two steps where the Options window where I could choose location, language and a few more parameters. The installation itself started after completing and clicking on the Install button.

A couple of minutes later the installation was ended and iTunes showed the following window telling me that it had been a succesful setup.

Running itunes for the first time entailed the completion of a series of steps in order to configure it. As in the installation procedure the first window was the Welcoming to the iTunes Setup Assistant. Clicking Next took me to the Find Music Files window where iTunes offered to search in the My Music folder and make a iTunes library and to convert unprotected WMA into AAC to be added as well.

After that came a few more steps which I will not review right now just not to be a bore and mainly because they are irrelevant to this test provided they presented no incompatibilities of any kind.

And finally, iTunes really run for the first time.

Functionality & Integration
To test some of iTunes main features I played some MP3 files and as you can imagine it worked perfectly. No hitches or inconveniencies at all, moreover I can say the sound quality was really good.

Regarding integration with the Seven environment I found that iTunes works perfectly even with the Aero features not only in its visual effects but also the playback controls placed in the thumbnails.

Bugs Report
Although I found bugs or incompatibilities myself, I found that in some forums users are reporting some troubles with iTunes in particular when trying to install version 8 in Win 7 build 7000, anyway the solution to this issue seems to be running installation in compatibility mode and as an administrator. Most recommendations state that Version 9 of iTunes runs perfectly on build 7100 which is by the way the one we are using for this testings.

Final Words
As you can see, iTunes is still the best companion for our iPhone / iPod even if we are running Windows 7. Novelties and improvement for this version make of it a unique solution for our multimedia management.

Have you tried iTunes inyour Windows 7 machine? Please tell us what your experience is like in the comments section below.