I use media monkey for listening to podcasts and syncing my ipod, I'd recommend it over itunes as long as you just have an ipod or any other mp3 player and not an iphone/ipod touch since it does everything you'd need itunes to do (except put images/video on your ipod) and it comes without all the extra shit that itunes installs on your computer.
I also use winamp lite without any plugins/winamp agent/etc for listening to single songs/wavs or for listening to music in the background while doing something else like playing a game 'cause it starts up and plays almost instantly and uses very little resources.
If you were intent on using itunes then I'd recommend following
this guide so that you install only the components you need.
If you need quicktime, I'd go with Disco's suggestion and download
QT Lite or a full codec pack like
this, or both. Don't use QT Lite if you plan on using itunes though since itunes requires the full version of QT to be installed.