It was when I tried it, that was on version 0.2. Have in mind that I also used my old Win98 SE computer, which was under the minimum requirements. I'll test it again on the new one when I have some time, but I feel there would not be many differences.
Essentially, it's trying to compete against iTunes and now Windows Media Player (I was playing with it yesterday, and it left me very impressed). That's tough, and the software it's still at a very early phase. Once it blooms it could be very late for it to make some noise.
Anyway, I don't really like these kind of integrated media players, they end becoming very big, and you only want something to play music, not an entire new SO running inside another. If someone could come up with some new system akin to the iTMS and approved by the W3C (and thus with great possibilities of being integrated in major browsers) that you could integrate easily with your player of choice, it would be really great. The other way around you're trying to reinvent the wheel once and once again, and this solution could be faster to develop, implement and maintain. Of course, you'll need a single sign-on system (utopian right now), dialogue between record houses and software companies (unlikely) and no DRM (EMI started it, let's see if the others follow).
Bah, dreaming is cheap. Going back to your problem, have you looked at the
Squeezebox?. I think it's a quite neat solution for home. If you want to connect to your home network without being at home, that's an entirely different story. I can only think in a portable player in that case.
