Windows Updates

I have not been satisfied with the windows XP update downloads... they seem to make matters worse for me.

Now I have the option of upgrading my Windows Media Player 8 to 9.

Should I do it? Is anyone running 9 and what are the differences? Are you glad you downloaded it?
 
Originally posted by jeff-20@May 19, 2003 @ 04:17 PM

I have not been satisfied with the windows XP update downloads... they seem to make matters worse for me.

Now I have the option of upgrading my Windows Media Player 8 to 9.

Should I do it? Is anyone running 9 and what are the differences? Are you glad you downloaded it?

just use media player 6.4, if you really really dont want to though, 9 is better than 7 or 8 were, but still bloated
 
:agree

I think it has better music management, but still very bloated.

I personally go with Winamp and and older media player for video

The newest version of Winamp 2 (not 3!) is very polished and is nice and slim.
 
it's a little annoying for some reason my playlists always get doubles listings of the songs and it wont let me delet things from my playlist i dont know maybe it's just mine
 
Originally posted by Jurai@May 19, 2003 @ 11:22 PM

media player 9 also fiddles with mp3 id3 tags even when u specifically tell it not to

oooh I would hate that

and I'm not big into RealOne I think I'd rather use MS stuff than Real
 
I hate Real's crap for software. It's so annoying how it always has to make itself the default player for all the types of music and video formats. I always have to go in there and tell it to stop being stupid in the prefs.
 
IMHO the best video players I know of are Classic Media Player 6.4 (an enhanced clone of WMP6.4) and BSPlayer, which is extremely efficient and stable and has great support for many formats.
 
Am I like the only person who never has any problems with Microsoft programs? I mean seriously I can't think of a bad MS program since MS Bob...not that I ever used it.

As for WM9...works great for me. I use Winamp for mp3's but WM9 for everything else. I also like it's DVD interface. It's actually the only software DVD player that doesn't crash itself as soon as you try to play a DVD (though it does need one of them installed for the codec).
 
Am I like the only person who never has any problems with Microsoft programs?

Probably not, but then again most people who "never have any problems" with Microsoft (or Linux, or BSD, or MacOS...) do one or more of the following:

1) Only use one or two programs that don't really make extensive use of the OS or hardware

2) Only ever use one program for a particular function, and thereby lack a basis for qualitative comparison (e.g. I can scarcely stand IE's performance for some things after having grown accustomed to Phoenix/Firebird)

3) Ignore minor bugs because hey, everything's got a bug or two, right?

4) Regularly encounter various problems, but learn enough to deal with them effectively enough that they become trivial

5) Have good enough luck to not run into the (rare) severe brain damages lurking in untidy corners (FWIW, I'm only running Gentoo instead of XP right now because I manaed to fail this one, and I'm sure Gentoo is hiding a few also)

6) Exclusively run mature feature-frozen software that is still actively fixed

Basically, no one who's being honest is likely to tell you that all MS software is horrible, it's just that there's often better stuff (or at least a vastly better value, for e.g. Office) out there, paired with the idea that MS should produce the best software because they have the most money to throw at the problem, so I suspect there's sort of a quiet resentment that builds up.
 
I just like a media player that doesn't need a 3Ghz processor to run without hesitation.

It's just not right
 
Originally posted by racketboy@May 20, 2003 @ 12:25 AM

I just like a media player that doesn't need a 3Ghz processor to run without hesitation.

It's just not right

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exactly

and a 12+MB download. What in the hell could possibly be in all of those bytes
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it's crazy.

I also use Winamp for almost everything, I just found out last night that Winamp Classic was updated to V2.91 Hooray!
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It even has a 'library' for playlist, and internet radio. all this in a 2MB download
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.. It plays video too, but I haven't messed with it.

though I will compliment WMP for 1 reason. I don't have a DVD drive on my computer and have never even tried to play a DVD on one. tonight a little girl wanted to play a DVD on her 2Ghz computer. In less than 1 minute I was able to start Harry Potter on her XP's WMP in fullscreen. It looked and sounded great! and it was easy.

BUT!! only by my known keyboard shortcuts! the huge, overbloated, and ugly interface was impossible! Thank goodness I knew CTRL+ENTER makes it go to fullscreen. Those menues are stupid and use synonyms for completly different functions! it's too much information and confusing. I can't even remeber how I started the DVD, but it wasn't form the file menu. that's weird and different

and why oh why are all of MS downloads OS updates? Why can't you uninstall a freakin' media player? I wouldn't bother messing with it.
 
Keep this in mind that that 12MB download isn't just the interface you see when you use Media Player. It basically includes the interface, DirectShow (the guts of windows media), MANY video and audio codecs and the visualizations.

DirectShow alone is a good 6-8MB alone. The rest is for the interface and stuff. So don't really blame Media Player for it all.

Now as for the whole uninstalling thing with all the MS products (IE and WMP being the main ones). You have to keep one thing in mind. They really CAN'T afford to let you uninstall them. I know that seems stupid but remember that what you actually see isn't everything that makes up IE or WMP.

IE and WMP provide many standard windows libraries to do their thing. The problem with removing them is that there are ALOT of programs out there that make use of these libraries as well. They may not necessarily show the same interface but they use the underlaying libraries to do their stuff. Alot of shareware and such programs for example sometimes include embeded browser windows, where do you think they get those from?

Also many media players or programs that allow you to watch videos and play music relly on the DirectShow libraries and the more programmer friendly Media Player libraries that WMP provides.

The advantage of using these libraries for programmers is that they don't have to reinvent the wheel everytime they want to include one of these functions in their programs (and as a benefit it also reduces the size of their programs). Microsoft provides a literal SHITLOAD of free libraries and tools for people to use. Heck I would estimate that they provide nearly half of their libraries from their major programs as free downloads. And I should know I've used many of them.

Some notable examples

DirectX is free (always has been) and is a VERY powerful multimedia library.

DirectShow is a very good and powerful video and audio library with tons of codecs.

MS has had their FREE voice synthesis and voice recognition libraries available for years now.

IE allows simple integration of many internet functions into apps.

VBA (while not completely free if you have any product that has it you can use it too) allows anybody to include a very powerful and standard programming language to add scripting functionality to their programs.

VBScript is a completely FREE scripting language that can be included in your programs.

Anywho that's my rant.
 
good points GB900, but that doesn't excuse the sluggish performance of WMP9

On a side note, I will be nice to MS by saying that Excel is an excellent product.

Now you can't say that I'm a total MS basher
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Originally posted by racketboy@May 20, 2003 @ 01:32 PM

good points GB900, but that doesn't excuse the sluggish performance of WMP9

One thing I also notice is that alot of the time people have unrealistic expectations of their software. "How come winxp is so slow on my 486!!!!111" (Ok a bit of an extreme example but you get the point.

To give you an example from my own experiences here goes.

Pentium 233MMX with Win2k running WM8 and 196mb of ram took on average 2-5 seconds to load WMP (it depended alot on how much ram I had at the time I ran it and how bogged down the system was with other things).

Pentium III 600 laptop with 128mb ram and winxp (WMP9) took an average of 3-8 seconds to load WMP (this was however mostly due to the small amount of ram for winxp standards and the slow as fuck laptop hd this thing has). When I had win98 (the original os) WMP8 took only 1-3 seconds to load.

My current Athlon 2400+ with 512mb ram and winxp (WMP9) takes an average of 1-2 seconds to load and begin to play any video or audio. (More if the codec used is slow itself, like divx)

Keep in mind that WMP9 was designed to run on a minimum 1.2GHz pc with at least 256mb of ram. It's a fairly recent player with ALOT of features in it so you have to expect it to take at least a little bit of time to load. Once it's loaded (and memory resident) WMP9 only uses an extremely small amount of resoureces (plus whatever the current codec and visualizations use) to run.

Yes WinAmp is smaller and faster than WMP9 but then again it was designed to run a more limited number of file formats. WMP9 was designed to run just about any format out there.
 
Originally posted by gameboy900@May 20, 2003 @ 07:11 PM

Yes WinAmp is smaller and faster than WMP9 but then again it was designed to run a more limited number of file formats. WMP9 was designed to run just about any format out there.

WinAmp will play any major audio format.

Like I said before as for video formats, I just prefer the olderer WMP or MPClassic.

It's not a big deal to use two different programs.

I tried to like WMP9 -- I really did.

But it's just has too much hesitation for even simple tasks like messing with playlists.

Winamp has tons better support in terms of skins and plugins.

Most of the few skins that are availible for WMP that look nice in screenshots, in reality look like crap when in use (jaggies). Also when in "skin mode" you lose most of the extras that WMP has.

I also have to say that I love the new fade in/out when you skip/pause tracks. Very polished.
 
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