ITunes 7.0.1.8 experiences - Here's what got fixed for me...

Question

After news of the iTunes 7.0.1.8 update broke out today, I downloaded it and have used it for a little while.
I'd thought I'd share my experiences so far, but please take note that I did not do any CD burning/importing tests, nor do I own an iPod to sync content to or a 5.1 set of speakers to play songs with. I have heard that this update dramatically fixes the slow recognition and sync times for iPods and that there is better speaker recognition for surround sound systems, but I can't personally confirm this.
My current audio settings in QuickTime are at 48kHz, 16-bit, QuickTime Music Synthesizer. Safe Mode is disabled. These have been my withstanding settings since iTunes 6. To my knowledge, all sound drivers and video drivers are up to date. Hardware acceleration is at full, and DirectX is also up to date.
Some problems I noticed in iTunes 7.0.0.10, in no order - and whether they've been fixed or not in iTunes 7.0.1.8:
Problem: Cover Flow view was slow to respond and had album art rendering issues. I didn't get the diagonal lines, but it definitely bogged down my system. Most likely a memory leak.
With 7.0.1.8: Partially fixed. CPU usage doesn't skyrocket as much, but the flow animations still stutter and album art rendering still lags. Once the art is loaded into RAM, however, Cover Flow is as smooth as ever and does not max out at 100% CPU for me.
Problem: Download manager was unresponsive. iTunes would crawl when playing a song and downloading something, as menu commands, pausing/unpausing, etc. was delayed by up to a minute. CPU usage at 100%.
With 7.0.1.8: Mostly fixed.The download manager is now noticably speedier, and is responsive to user inputs with pausing downloads, scrubbing songs, etc. However, CPU usage is still at 95%-100% when a download is running.
Problem: Gapless playback caused distortion.
With 7.0.1.8: Fixed. Gapless playback now works correctly and seamlessly, without causing distortion in the first or last few seconds of a song or delaying playback.
Problem: Audio playback became distorted and skipped when running any other applications, such as a web browser.
With 7.0.1.8: Partially Fixed - Your results may vary. Audio no longer messes up horribly anymore -- even when the voume is less than 100% -- which is great. However, small skipping is still apparent when browsing in Firefox or even in the iTunes Store. This happens sporatically, however, as I'm browsing now and there is no studdering, though minutes ago browsing caused some skips. CPU usage spikes to 100% momentarily when this occurs. Nonetheless, it is still a MAJOR improvement from before, and now I believe that skipping exists due to my only having 256MB RAM in this PC. Your results may vary.
Problem: Newly downloaded album art did not actually get embedded into the music file, and iTunes didn't find album artwork for tracks that were in the iTunes store.
With 7.0.1.8: Not fixed. Downloaded album art from iTunes 7 is not embedded into the actual file, and needs to be copy-pasted back in the Artwork tab of the "Get Info" window. One non-related fix, though, is that album art can now be manually added in the album viewer on the bottom left of the window for multiple tracks at once. For downloading artwork (I did not set this as 'automatic' in my iTunes preferences but did it manually), I recommend matching the store listing 100% with track numbers, capitalizations, etc. and making sure the ID3 tags of MP3 files are v2.2 or higher.
Problem: At random times, checkboxes did not actually check or uncheck when clicked on; this was especially true in the Podcast library. Only a manual right-click menu selection would check or uncheck an item.
With 7.0.1.8: Fixed. No more checkboxing issues so far.
Problem: Visualizer size setting in Preferences -> Advanced tab (Small, Medium, Large) did not actually take effect.
With 7.0.1.8: Not fixed. The visualizer still plays in the "large" setting, no matter what the setting is; I believe this is a bug. In addition to this, when in Cover Flow view and changing to the visualizer, Cover Flow leaves an intrusive snapshot on top of the visualizer, which isn't fixed until switching out of the visualizer and changing back to the list or album view.
Problem: Video playback stuttered when viewing on-screen controls, and the controls didn't appear when the mouse was over the video and iTunes was in mini player mode or minimized. Clicking on the video at that point stopped playback and closed the video window.
With 7.0.1.8: Not fixed. While video playback is snappier in iTunes 7 in general, this little oversight hasn't been touched yet. I also believe part of it is because of a lack of RAM on my computer, but would've liked to see more smooth playback like what was found in the last revision of iTunes 6, in addition to the added controls.
Problem: Adding ratings from within the library is a little hit-or-miss; I have to click on a certain edge of the star to select it.
With 7.0.1.8: Not fixed. I have to click pretty firmly on the ratings column in my iTunes library, or just do it manually by right-clicking or doing it in the Get Info window.
I think that covers most of what I personally found in the previous version of iTunes 7. I didn't previously have the importing problem or settings fail to save (sans the visualizer), however. (Feel free to add to this thread with your experiences if you'd like.)
Dell Dimension 2400 Windows XP Intel Celeron 2.59GHz, 256MB RAM

Answer 1

UPDATE/EDIT FROM PREVIOUS POST:
Ok. The new 7.0.18 does repair the volume slider audio issue. HOWEVER, Simply installing the new update (at least for me) did **NOT** fix the problem. After posting my previous post, I tried to remove Quicktime and iTunes completely and try reinstalling.
It turns out that when I uninstalled Quicktime from Add/Remove Programs, it didn't remove all the Quicktime files and it was not reinstalling Quicktime afterwards!!
I only noticed when I downloaded the standalone version of Quicktime and tried running it and it said a "newer version" was on my computer, though it did not show up on my Add/Remove Programs file listing.
So I looked in the usual places and found that I had a Quicktime folder remaining in the Program Files folder and one in the C:\Windows\system32 folder. I also had to manually remove the following files from the C:\Windows\system32 folder:
Quicktime.qts, QuickTimeMusicalInstruments.qtx, the Quicktime.Resources folder, QuicktimeVR.qtx and the QuickTimeVR.Resources folder.
The main problem is that iTunes didn't let me know there was an issue with the QuickTime installation. It just wouldn't run iTunes. There should have been a notification.
Anyway, after all this, I reinstalled iTunes fresh and checked the volume slider and LO' And Behold! The volume slider issue was repaired.
However, there is a LOT of skipping occurring that never happened before. Not sure what's up with that. CPU usage stays low and then I get a few skips per minute...UNACCEPTABLE!!! That didn't happen before and that issue will still need to be fixed. Until then, back to WinAmp. Thx a LOT Apple...you *#^@ing hosers!