mp3 players for PC

2nd Mar 2004

I spent a lengthy period experimenting with a myriad of music players for my PC about a year or so ago. I was (and always had been) using the excellent Winamp, but due to some sort of conflict or other on my system at the time I had to uninstall it! I went for a change rather than a re-install and opted for Musicmatch Jukebox which had a nifty burning feature which allowed me to create CD's directly from compilations. However I soon grew disillusioned with it due to the somewhat complex and unintuitive user interface.There may have been a couple of other players inbetween but I can't remember.Then I found Real Player, which had a delicious look and feel and burning functionality too! Two real downsides were

1. the adverts and constant internet activity whenever a new song started or a new CD was played
2. the actual running weight of the program on my system resources started to take it's toll (when running Real Player, check the Windows Task Manager to see all sorts of dodgy programs running in the background, sapping up your PC's speed)

Luckily I found a few websites that described how to make changes to certain Real Program files that prevented any of the forsaid trouble. However, toppling-domino-style, the result was the CDDB didn't work anymore! This I have put up with until recently when I found a link to the BBC website with a download of Real Player without the extra gubbins weighing you down.Go get Real Player (lite version).