By Matthew Fordahl
The Associated Press

Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music software rips and burns songs. It links you to a legal music store. It's easily downloadable. And now it's available to the 95 percent of computer users who depend on Microsoft Windows operating systems.

ITunes for Windows is as fully featured as the Mac software - and it's just as easy to buy songs online at Apple's iTunes Music Store.

The catch is that if you want to transfer songs to a portable player, you've got to use an iPod, which starts at $300.

Still, compared with the Windows competition, iTunes can't be beat.

Installation is simple: download a 19-megabyte file from Apple's site and run the installer.

Even in Windows, iTunes resembles a program on the Mac OS X operating system. The interface looks like brushed aluminum. The screen, which annoyingly doesn't resize quite like a Windows program, is divided into several panes. One is for the source of the music: your own library, the music store, or play lists that can be created manually or automatically. Another is a search field. Click on the rainbow eyeball and the view changes for quick browsing by genre, artist or album.

The navigation scheme is carried to the iTunes Music Store, which is always easily accessible and charges 99 cents per track or $9.95 or more per album. As with the original Mac iTunes, Apple has enabled one-click buying.

The music store - on Macs and PCs - offers gift certificates, with regular allowances to keep kids' buying under control.

Apple also has partnered with Audible.com and offers 5,000 audiobooks for sale.