I’ve never been a fan of Realplayer, though I often end up installing it when I need to play some content that’s only available in that dreaded format. Searching for an alternative, I found this excellent blog post which describes, better than I could, just why I loathe that app.
[BTW, Comments are locked (again). I still need to add some spam proofing before I can open them up. Sorry for that. Email is always fine. Or you can catch me on Google Talk.]