downloading and saving midis should be a matter of simply right-clicking on them and choosing the proper itme from the menu.."save target as.." or whatever yours says

but, more important....there are **MANY** ways to play midis without dealing with Micro$oft...WinAmp is one of the best, and is free..as is FoxPlay, which will allow you to set up playlists of most sound files you have...

you can also play midis (and other types of sound files) with another, amazing *free* piece of software, which will also display almost ANY type of graphic file...IrfanView This is one of the most astounding FREE pieces of software on the planet.

Now, about 'associations', mentioned above.....You could have 6 different programs which will play a midi (or other sound file), but if you go to your file manager (Explorer or one of the good ones, and double-click on the sound file, it will be opened and played by the default application that is 'associated' with that type of file. Microsoft would LOVE for you to just let them spoon-feed you their proprietary apps and default settings, so that they can control how EVERYONE does things. The face is, there are 'usually' better ways to view, listen, search, manage, sort, count, etc...than MS offers....

There are even little programs to more easily manage the PROCESS of choosing how to associate files with YOUR preferred applications! Take a look here

(copied from the page)FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION

FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION lets you manage your file associations, offering many features that Windows lacks. You can view registered extensions and the file types associated with them, clean up invalid entries, correct erroneous associations, and add extensions to existing file types.

The import of all this rant and such is to help as many people as possible realize that there are SO many choices about how to do the things you need with your computer!! What comes as the default with Windows is NOT always the best, and is becoming more & more invasive and restrictive as Leenia points out....