Best I've tried! I really like that I can control many aspects of iTunes without having to mess with iTunes directly. / To those who complain about having to have iTunes open, you're only half-right. You can set iTunes to minimize to your system tray (Edit>Prefs>Adv>Gen). The systray icon has a right-click menu, but if you need to pause or mute quickly, it can be cumbersome. This gadget is super easy, and in No Artwork or Bare Bones mode, it doesn't take up any more room than it has to. The ability to control volume (and EQ, shuffle, etc) is great too, as I usually keep my iTunes low so I can hear other alerts and things. Of course, sometimes I like it loud, so being able to control it quickly is awesome. / The only tweaks I'd make is maybe to have more control over what's displayed in the sidebar. I love the Super-Thin display undocked, and something that tiny in the sidebar would be great. Maybe add checkboxes to select features (title, artist, album, rating, progress, etc) for a fully-customized experience. Since I'm playing my own library, I don't usually need more than the song title to be displayed. (Simiar to Federmania87's suggestion.) Add a color/theme set and it'd leave the other iTunes gadgets even further behind in the dust. / To Big-Macs-Rule2514: It sounds like maybe you haven't found the Menu button (lower-left-hand corner). You can turn Shuffle on from there, or if you're running a playlist/shuffle in iTunes, the gadget plays it as iTunes serves it. If this isn't your issue, forgive me; just trying to help. :) / I second honda_magna's request - is there any way to do that? / I'm running iTunes 7.4.3.1 and the gadget can open and recognize my iTunes just fine. If there was an issue with a previous version, it may be worked out by now. / Thanks for helping to restore my pleasure in iTunes (often so inconvenient that I'd rather just listen to CDs). I'll recommend this to everyone I know who uses Vista and iTunes. Can't wait to see how this gem evolves.

This is the best gadget I've seen. It's nice and compact and has the all-important volume control that is missing from a lot of the other ones.

Great sidebar gadget. I hated having itunes open all the time in a window, but having it minimized to the tool bar didn't give me quite as much control as i wanted. This tool is a perfect in between. Just go to the advanced option, minimize it to the tray, and have tis bad boy open.

This is the best itunes gadget i tried :-)

I could be way off base here...what advantage does this have over running iTunes in MiniPlayer mode? Yes, it is cool, yes, it does have the right functions and I'm not intending to be a big 'ol jerk, but I'm not seeing the usefullness of the gadget.

This is excellent! Not only do you get basic controls, but you can pick a playlist, Equalizer, rate a song, toggle shuffle all from just this little app! Normally I don't like apps taking up space like this one does but its well worth it!

I listen to podcasts for hours on end, but am also doing a number of other things on the computer at the same time, I'm forever having to switch to IT to move on forward past advertising slots, which was really becoming a pain. Not any more. Now I can have this nifty little gadget just sitting on the desktop and use it to modify all the settings I want to, so much easier and quicker. I'm using Win 7 and the latest version of IT with no problems whatsoever. Definitely RECOMMEND!! :)

After installing this gadget, I cannot get it to open iTunes through the menu option inside the gadget itself, and if I start iTunes on my own, the gadget does not recognize that iTunes is running. iTunes v7.2.0.34

I rate it three stars because when it works, for what it does, is good. Gets the job done, and displays art work. I am now able to quickly slip over and rate a song too. But... Win7 (x64) has been hanging up on reboot, and the Force Restart of “iTunes Accessory” is always popping up. A force restart will hang the OS from completing, like there’s sometime accessing the disk still. Waiting for iTunes Accessory to finish takes a rather lengthy amount of time as well. What is it doing, really? Why doesn’t it just close? Have to start iTunes manually as well, and when trying to quit iTunes (9.0.2.25) it tells me it’s waiting for iTunes Accessory to close, do I want to wait. Something fishy is going on here…

This is the best gadget if u love music. its easy to use but has great ideas. best gadget there is!