Winamp, if only I had a beautiful section…
July 26, 2006Winamp, you may have heard of this program mentioned somewhere, but you’ve always stuck with iTunes or some other bulky media player. Well not today!
Winamp is a small, free, or if you choose, affordable media player that comes with, not only all the standard features you would expect from a media player but more. For instance, can you watch web TV in iTunes? I think not! Winamp allows you access to hundreds of different shows through Shoutcast TV. It also lets you listen to different radio shows that happen to be streaming. You can search for songs, music videos, and play games.
Winamp is also great because of the customizablilty. You don’t need to be computer savvy to change the color scheme on the Winamp player, but for those who are more savvy, you can download whole different skins for Winamp.
Winamp also allows you to get plugins. Plugins are different pieces of software created by a person or several people, that allow Winamp to do different things. My personal favorite plugin is PaceMaker. PaceMaker for Winamp allows you to control the tempo, pitch and speed of a song.
It’s customizability, cost (nothing unless you want pro), and non-bulkyness, makes Winamp one of the best, if not the best media player out there.
This picture shows how one can shrink Winamp down so that they only have to see the basic controls and song name.
This picture shows Winamp expanded open with the playlist and media library showing.
I love winamp and have since 1.0 but the recent versions have gotten more and more AOL infected.
I finally got fed up with it! You can get off the “version update treadmill” by going to http://oldversion.com and getting one of the great old builds. I’m personally running 5.1 surround sound edition right now and loving it.
When you run it is in “shade” mode it rides right at the top of your screen, and doesn’t block any usable space (I sit it right to the left of the minimize/maximize/close buttons of my mail app)
u r so beautiful