Admittedly, when you change platforms there will be heartache. Always, I guarantee it. Trust me, - I know, I've searched for the perfect OS for years having switched between Sun OS / Solaris, Red Hat 5 / Linux, DOS, Windows/XP and Mac OS X 10.x. This time will be no exception (as I am making the switch back - more on that later), and WMP11 is just the beginning of my heartaches.
A funny thing happens when you start learning a new product... problems seem to melt away. Sure, there is screaming and gnashing of teeth... but afterwards you're not sure why you just didn't "grok" it. Moving my podcasts (painfully) from iTunes to WMP11 (via FeedStation by Newsgator) my biggest problem (other than M$ being totally clueless in their complete and total disregard for Podcasts in WMP11) was how the playlists in WMP11 seemed to 'dissapear' even though the files were in the library, as well as the almost hidden 'Auto Playlist' functionality (although, this too is incredibly weak). I've discovered that the playlists don't disappear, in fact Microsoft hides them by default if you've listened to everything in them (kind of like the old paradigm in Office where Microsoft would hide less used menu items - completely frustrating). Cool for podcasts, but since Microsoft has no clue what a podcast is - why the hell would they do that? Imagine a scenario where a user listens to a custom playlist.. and then once they've listened to it... it appears to delete itself! Huh?! Sure maybe Feedstation is doing something special here - but somehow I doubt it.
One other quirk that still bugs me that I failed to mention in my first post, is the 'floating text' vs. the clean alternate line highlights. It's like in Excel when you print a worksheet without "Print Grid Lines" turned on... you get a sheet of paper that's supposed to be a spreadsheet... but it looks like random text thrown on to the page with no reference to form (so you can gather the function). There isn't even an option to fix it! Ahhhh.
More hair pulling will no doubt ensue, but at least WMP11 beta is FASTER and better performing than Apples dog. Plus it will work with my new Toshiba Gigabeat S (the black one). It's a PMC like the one CNET is going banannas over.
WMP11 is definitely not perfect. Hopefully Microsoft wakes up and fixes all of my gripes (podcast management, playlist quirks and the non-shaded details view) prior to launch. For the mean time I'm trying out XM+Napster... (unfortunately, it too doesn't get podcasting... and Feedstation doesn't even know it exists).