[d] enclosed in brackets chaotic perfectionist for hire

It's probably been four years since I used Winamp, and I decided to try it again as of this afternoon (more on that later).

Still pretty much the same look, and it still seems small-ish and quick. Of course, compared to iTunes (especially the later versions), it seems a lot faster. There are also different features that I realized I miss, like the Windowshade mode. The whole app shrinks to the size of a title bar, which is nice when I like having as much screen real estate available as possible. Yes, iTunes has a minimal mode, but it's too blocky.

More on it later once I've used it for more than two hours. In the meantime, I'm wondering about the different media players people use. I have several (just on my Windows XP machine): WMP, Media Player Classic, VLC player, Winamp, iTunes, and last.fm. Any other suggestions, besides getting rid of some?

I need some help. Right now I use iTunes for all of my podcasting goodness. I'm not sure that I like it though... It's mostly good, and I mostly like it. They're pretty well managed, and I can edit what I need to (most of the time), but I can't add externally downloaded podcasts and have them show up in that directory.

I'm looking for something else (maybe), and I want to get some recommendations. I already looked in a couple of places (like Podcasting News and Wikipedia), but I'd like some feedback on what other people are using before I start installing everything.

As far as features go, I'm looking for something that works like almost a cross between iTunes and Picasa, but for audio. It would allow me to subscribe to podcasts and manage them, and (hopefully) have bittorrent support... I'll leave the rest open for now.