Mac users who utilize QuickTime for their video player might want to take a look at the Windows Media Components for QuickTime available for download at Microsoft’s site.

With Windows Media for QuickTime, by Flip4Mac, you can play Windows Media files (.wma and .wmv) directly in QuickTime Player and view Windows Media content on the Internet using a Web browser.

This plugin works on Mac OSX and QuickTime 7 or higher. The program author, Flip4Mac offers additional packages which will allow you to import and export to WMV formats if you ever have any projects which require this.

Since I installed Windows 7 I’ve been loading in a bunch of apps. Some run the same as they did in XP with no noticeable improvement in speed or stability, while others appear to run much better. Here’s a few:

Mozilla Firefox

Since the introduction of version 3, the best way I can describe FF is that it "bottoms out" on XP too often.

Even with something as simple as launching the browser "cold" after system startup, it would pause for seemingly no reason. And bear in mind I use only use three add-ons that don’t tax the browser whatsoever.

And then there’s the FF’s memory-munching tendencies. On XP, the longer the browser is open, the more you see this.

On Windows 7, these issues are gone. It starts fast with the same add-ons and I can keep it open as long as I want.

OpenOffice Writer

This is a a beast-sized app and takes a while to get going on XP. And once running I would periodically see screen drawing issues where things would not land in proper places, forcing me to maximize/restore to reset it.

OO Writer still takes a bit to launch on 7 but is notably faster. And I don’t encounter any of those wonky screen draw issues either.

QuickTime

If you said, "I hate QuickTime", I can totally understand why. On XP this app has never run right. The only time people run and install QuickTime is so they can play MOV files.

Windows Media Player does have native support to play MOV files in 7, so you don’t have to install it now. But I need it because I have a Pro license for additional export abilities to other formats.

QuickTime in Windows 7 runs a whole lot better in every way. It launches better, the menus look more proper and is more stable all around.

Skype

Whenever I used Skype in XP it was a crapshoot as to whether it would work correctly or not. Most of the time it would work without complaint, but other times certain features just wouldn’t work whereas you had to restart the app over and over again.

To note, with this particular app there are only two types of experiences concerning running it on XP. It will either run fine without complaint or it will be problematic routinely. I was of the latter.

Skype in 7 breathed in a whole new life to this app. Now I can say it runs fine without complaint.

Other apps?

Out of the apps I’ve installed so far, there hasn’t been any instance where it ran worse than I did on XP. If there were, I definitely would have mentioned it, no question.

Lastly, I want to note two things:

Windows 7 will not make a bad program suddenly wonderful. If an app was written with haphazardly written code, has memory leaks and so on, 7 obviously won’t magically fix that.

Windows is well known for having strong legacy support. But if your app is ancient and didn’t work on XP, it won’t work in Windows 7 either.

Inevitably you’re going to come across some web sites that still (for whatever reason) insist on delivering video content in QuickTime and not Flash. And of course at that point you have to download QuickTime via QuickTime.com.

Mac users never have a problem with QuickTime because it works superb with MacOS. However as many people are aware, Apple doesn’t exactly program things for Windows that “play nice”, so to speak. There are some that think Apple’s QuickTime is so bad they they call it the “New RealPlayer” (in reference to how Real’s RealPlayer software really sucked).

Is there an alternative? Absolutely. You can try out QuickTime Alternative. Compared to regular QuickTime, this loads fast and isn’t bulky at all.

Try it out. You may like it.

I bought a QuickTime Pro 7 license in 2006 (yes I actually did pony up the 30 bucks) so I could get some additional functionality out of the software. I recently found out that the version is now up to 7.5 so I downloaded the upgrade. The notice shown on install would make it appear as if your license is no longer valid after you install this.

Not true.

Your 7 license will “carry over” if you already have it in there. I installed it and everything was a-okay. This is a significant improvement over previous versions where the install software would REMOVE your key and you had to re-enter in manually.

We’re it up to me I would do everything in DivX AVI as I personally feel it’s a superior format (heck, there’s even Linux support for it) to MOV. But Macs sometimes have difficultly playing those files even with (freely available) native support. And forget about trying to play WMVs on a Mac easily, so.. QuickTime it is for the time being and that’s why I use it.