[Dixielandjazz] Listening with Windows Media.

[Don Robertson]

Thanks Andy,

I am aware there's lots of stuff going on in background, but never 
thought about who the culprits might be, and didn't consider that Real 
Player might be a major culprit.  I had trouble with Real Player when I 
upgraded to version 11, to take advantage of the ability to download 
from YouTube.  Once I got the set up sorted out with some help from 
their support forum, it has worked OK.  In the interim I used Windows 
Media Player, but as I said before, it refused to accept a pause command 
when I clicked on the pause button.

My pet peeve is MS Office's "nanny warnings" especially in mail merge 
when it wants to know if "I really want to open such and such data base" 
every time I open a mail merge document.  I wish I knew if they could be 
turned off.

Don Robertson


Andy.Ling at Quantel.Com wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
>