[Dixielandjazz] Listening with Windows Media.

[Andy.Ling at Quantel.Com]

Don Robertson wrote on 05/06/2008 01:42:28:

> Why is everybody bad mouthing Real Player?  I use it to listen to 
> OKOM.com (streaming audio) out of New Jersey, and it works fine.  I can 
> pause it in Real Player.

Real player works - as in plays real streams, but it does a lot
of stuff in the background which annoys some people.

It has a tendency to "get in the way". Things like the
message service, which was forever popping up.

It was also a "closed" standard and if you wanted to generate
real content you had to pay a licence fee.

Some (maybe all) of these things have changed, but mud sticks.

Actually, lots of software does things in the background you
are probably unaware of. They install special services
that are checking for updates and monitoring your CD drive
to see if you insert a CD they recognise and all sorts of things
like this. It's all part of making things "friendly". But the
more you have the more things slow down.

Lots of people are of the opinion that an application should
only be running when you want and once you hit the close
button it disappears completely until the next time you run it.

Just open up your task manager and look at the mass of stuff running.
I bet there is a good percentage that has nothing to do with
keeping the operating system running.

I guess it's all about choice. If Real player works for you, fine,
but some would like an alternative.

Andy Ling



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