WMP 11 isn't so bad, but the big criticism of WMP all along is that it doesn't support global hot keys like winamp does.
enter "WMP Keys" from
sourceforge. It runs like a champ and does the job, using Ctrl-Alt-Right Arrow for next track, Left for previous track etc. you need to register the plugin dll, and when i ran it from the command prompt first of all, it didn't succeed. you need to register it with admin privilege, to do this right click the command prompt in the start menu and run it as administrator.