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Windows Vista Build 5231 Review
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has just released a new build for Windows Vista and it looks like Microsoft has made quite a few graphical changes. "This is possibly the only application with more anticipation surrounding it than Internet Explorer 7, if not Vista itself. We wonder if Microsoft would bundle Windows Media Player 11 with Vista exclusively or would it be available for download separately for Windows XP as well. It most certainly will end up looking a lot better (graphically) than most music players out there, iTunes included. Although it appears to look pretty straightforward, the interface has changed drastically, which makes it far more attractive than Windows Media Player 10 as well as competing applications."
Microsoft again proves it knows how to sell a product. Not that graphical changes/updates are a bad thing - far from it, I like my eye-candy as do most. The most important thing about it, however, is that looks sell.
Now maybe since the thing looks prettier, they'll start working on adding some revolutionary functionality. I think that consumers valuing function over appearance are the minority of those who will be spending money, however.
You can fault Microsoft for not being much of a software company if you wish, but their business/marketing/money-making talent is second to none.
Quote:
We have never seen any WMP run this smooth especially on a beta release. While this might not mean much to anybody, it's a step in the right direction for Microsoft. Only thing we need to check now is how smoothly it runs while running a plethora of other applications in the end.
One thing we would like to mention is that our library had 1000+ songs, but there were no hiccups while scrolling through the list. It was almost like scrolling down Google's search results, which is very smooth and hassle-free. This could be due to implementation of Microsoft's new graphics technologies, namely XAML and WGF 2.0. Needless to say, this is definitely something to get excited about, since we can clearly remember the times when we launched WMP 10 and it would get stuck at the guide page, thereby making the user experience terrible.
(needed) manages your albums
(pretty) gets album cover to display so you can visualize
(good) manages your preferences/statistics (you can see what you are listening to)
(pretty) presents those informations in an aesthetic way
(good) or just gets minimized to the systray
(good) all operations are two to three clicks away.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
How much do you need your media player to do beyond playing media?
If i wouldn't have gotten a mac I don't know if I would have ever gone past winamp 2.x
Well, as far as video goes I'm more than happy with Media Player Classic. It's basicly a WMP6.4(!) clone but able to play DVDs+++. No skinning, in fact 99.9% of the time I use it is in fullscreen playback with no UI at all. Haven't seen any feature in WMP7-10 that would make me change back.
As far as music goes, I know a lot of people have much more desire to organize and sort and do multiple playlists and ratings and even eyecandy while listening to music. Both Winamp, WMP and iTunes have made a lot of progress since Winamp 2.x here. I'm mostly like you, not really in the market but it's definately there.
Kjella
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You prefer alternative solutions probably because you attack the organizational problem from a different angle. While your solutions makes perfect sense to someone working on a file system level -- you have tidy organized music so it's easy to find & burn, and don't need to scan -- many users work on a more abstract level with playlists. If you do, suddenly the playlist sorting intelligence and logical grouping of music from possibly more than one folder (or even drives) etc, makes a lot more sense because instead of opening up a separate app to select and burn your music, you click a single button to take care of burning your sorted list already open. The same thing with syncing. No need to open folders and drag & drop stuff each time you want to do this. Sure, you can make a script for the job or whatever, but then you just do a different form of preparation to simplify your job. Another user may instead of that form of automation prefer the media player's.
Store all your media in a single location? Yes, it's a much more simple solution, and also less flexible as you aren't working on an abstract enough level to e.g. cover multiple physical and/or network drives, and so on. Sometimes you actually want this, and then you can use one of these players, and you'd once again get "your single location" point of access -- the media player's metadata-powered music library.
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