Windows Media Player and Playlists

Well, I've had a My Playlists folder in the My Documents directory for ages and its always been empty. That is to say, I haven't ever really used Windows Media Player except to play audio CDs occasionally and to stream videos when I've had to. Before this weekend, I had Real One, Winamp and Windows Media PLayer - all of which can play audio and video. I also have Apple QuickTime but I don't know if that plays audio files. Anyway, I'm trying to rationalise my media players and have decided to settle on Windows Media Player (at least for the moment). On my last PC, I wanted to play an audio CD - not an unrealistic demand, even though the PC was not very powerful it was PC Chips processor running at around 300MHz. Anyway, to get to the point Windows Media Player wouldn't play a CD whereas Winamp did - so I've used Winamp for audio ever since. Now though, I'm giving Windows Media Player a go again. I have some CDs with my MP3 tracks on and I've created playlists in Windows Media Player for all of them. So now, I select a disk and choose my playlist, put it on shuffle and away I go - several hours of music played in combinations I would never have chosen myself. Seems to be going OK, there are occasional skips but nothing serious.