Solo Technology

Have you tried the latest flavor of Windows Media Player? Version 11 is generally available and seems to be worth a look. To be honest, I didn’t think V10 was all that bad; I’ve been using it for quite some time to manage my music library because, frankly, it just seems to get the job done. Version 11 seems to be more of the same and (arguably) a bit prettier to boot.

You may want to wait a day before downloading. It was rather slow tonight… Like under 12KB/sec slow. Guess I wasn’t the only one who was curious. While waiting for the download, admire the design changes page, pick out a new skin (some incredible skins offset by some truly goofy stuff…), and scope out the media player plug-ins site.

The new interface is nice. Heck, even browsing the library is pleasant with the default icon view. Menus are re-arranged a bit and, in general, finding options is a bit more obvious than it used to be. Granted, like previous versions of Windows Media Player, “standard” User Interface conventions pretty much go out the window… but in most cases stuff is easily figured out.

I’ve read several places that say it’s using much less RAM than WMP 10. Unfortunately, I never paid much attention to v10 memory usage, so can’t confirm that… I can tell you that right now, with WMP 11 minimized and the toolbar thingy going, it is using 11MB. Seems tolerable. And speaking of the toolbar controls — much easier on the eyes than previous versions.

In general, I’d say this is worth the look.  The installer will suggest some music stores to you, but you can skip ‘em, so don’t get too stressed about the marketing angle.

[via slashdot, where you can always enjoy the anti-Microsoft rants in the comments]

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