Few questions, .avi..task manager

Hi,
I haven't had much time with my Macbook pro and was wondering about a few things. I know quicktime doesn't play .avi so I downloaded vlc because I use it alot on my pc, the only thing is that the quality of my vids seems far inferior on my mac than pc. Im thinking its because of the player. What is the best quality player that can support several different types of media?

I also am really missing my task manager from windows and not being able to see the stats quickly..cpu, apps running, end now. Is there an easy way to see that type of important info quick? Any recommended widgets possibly?

Hopefully in time I can figure alot of this stuff out and wont have to asks so many seemingly pointless questions. Thanks in advance.

Download the free codecs below and Quicktime will then play most formats (AVI, WMV etc.).

Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime® components

Windows Media® Components for QuickTime

As for task manager type utility, go to Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.

To quickly force quit an application, click the Apple symbol in top left then select 'Force Quit' which will bring up a list of all apps currently running and give you the option of quitting any of them.

also for active processes and memory usage, Activity Monitor in Applications > Utilities

Thanks for the replys.
So I installed perian and wm components but I am still getting pretty fuzzy pictures when I pull the screen out on quicktime. I dont really get it, I thought my mbp would really make my movies pop but .......;(

Also is there a way to make quicktime play fullscreen like it can on windows, thats how I like to watch my vids.

For full-screen click on 'View' then select 'Enter Fullscreen'.

Not sure what you mean about the videos not looking as good though, I've always found it to be the other way round and would think that a Macbook Pro would be excellent for viewing video.

Is it because the videos themselves are in a low resolution and look worse on a higher resolution screen? (For example low res videos will look better on a TV screen than a high res monitor). Try a high quality H264 encoded video and see what that is like.

The more you enlarge a low resolution video, the worse it will look on higher resolution displays.

Ex. A 240x180 video enlarged to full screen will look better on an 800x600 display than it will on a 1440x900 display.