Drag and drop is old school, but works as well as anything. You could ude another 3rd party program like MediaMonkey, DoubleTwist (I think even WMP works). If you start hacking the phone a bit, you can even send stuff wirelessly with WinSCP.

I think the Itunes bit is important to them only because a majority of the public already have it, use it, and know it. If they don't need another program to put media on the phone, it eases the transition from an Apple device to the Pre. I can't say how they're doing it is right, or that it's even that necessary (I've never once used Itunes on mine). But I can see their reasoning and admire they're guts to continue supporting a feature they advertised. Now, whether it's a wise decision in the end only time will tell