I can't really give much advise, since I haven't used
Windows machines outside work in a while. Asuming that
iinstalling Direct show filters and players with extra
plugins is just too much trouble probably not going to work
my from what I have heard the following might be good
advice:
1. Just listen to them.
a. VLC is what I have been using in the past. It's simple
and does not try to take over you computer, you just give
it some flac files and it plays it. It also plays DVD files
and just about any other type of audio or video file.
b. Winamp seems to be the popular choice, can't say I like
it, it just looks to me like a teenage boys idea of a cool
design (apologies to any teenagers with good taste).
c, Convert it to something iTunes friendly and listen to it
in itunes
2. Burn to CD
a. Spend money and buy Roxio Easy Media Creator.
b. Convert the files and use iTunes or any other CD burning
program.
3. Listen on iTunes, iPod and AppleTV. Basically you need
to convert the files to a format that iTunes understands.
This means either Apple Lossless, aac or mp3.
a. "dBpoweramp Music converter" seems to be the best one I
have found. In can conver straight from flac files to Apple
lossles, m3a and mp3. It also retains the tags during the
conversion meaning that iTunes will know the artist, album
title and song titles.
b. Download from here http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm and
install.
c. After that you need to install some exta "codecs" to be
abl;e to read flac files and write the output files.
Download and install the
m4a & mp4 & Apple
Lossless and
FLAC codedecs.
d. Now start the converter (Start->Program
Files->dbPower...->converter
e. The conversion is relativly selfexplanatory: Select the
output format, drop the files in and press the convert
button.
f. Now your files are ready to be imported into iTunes or
burned to a CD.