In case anyone's interested: earlier in this thread, I asked about alternatives to Realplayer, etc. I was looking for something easy to use, and don't necessarily want all the bells and whistles.

In the end I've settled for the free version of Winamp - it seems intuitively easy to use (simple user interface for simple users like me), fast to load and play (unlike realplayer which seemed to take forever sometimes), etc. I can create playlists easily (I know I didn't specify I wanted this before, but I admit it's useful to have), unlike Realplayer or Windows Media Player, which I always found a PITA to set up playlists in. Also, Windows Media Player sometimes caused Windows to freeze, needing me to power reset. So far Winamp has worked well with no problems.