Winamp 5.623

Winamp, the Nullsoft develop media player, has been around for as long as I can remember. Back in the day it used to be a simple player for your music and audio files, with not much more to offer. But it always seemed to be sufficient as it would mainly remain hidden in the taskbar while the music blasted in the speakers. Over time the software grew and improved at a consistent rate.

Winamp now comes with some 20,000 skins, more than 450 plug-ins, a robust file-management system, and features that are the backbone of other software applications. Like the fact that you can use Winamp to burn media onto a CD or DVD. Or the fact that you can plugin your iPod (or other portable device) and Winamp will sync files to your PC from the device. Or perhaps the fact that Winamp helps you discover new media by coming with a built-in browser.

While you listen to a tune, you can click on the artist’s name and Winamp will present, in a separate pane, headlines and web sites related to that artist. That is one feature that I particularly liked. I also liked the fact that Winamp comes with Podcast support and the fact that you can play with the sync list while in progress.
From a visual point of view, the Bento layout, with its joined browser panes, artist and album list, media player and so on, makes Winamp a very appealing piece of software from a visual point of view. If you do not like the default skin though, you could always go through the 20,000+ user contributed skins and surely you will find one that suits your tastes. For the traditionalist that liked the classic Winamp skin in the first place, things couldn’t be easier – just select the classic skin either during the installation process or afterwards from the Skins Menu.

The bottom line is that Winamp is an excellent music player. It does other things as well, like play videos and burn CDs, but with a catch. Video playback is a bit dodgy, and full-speed CD burning is available only in the Winamp Pro version, which costs money.

Pros

• Properly good media player
• Loads of skins
• Runs properly fast, even on less powerful computers

Cons

• You can burn files only with the paid version
• You can rip files only in the full version.
• Video playback is a bit dodgy

Winamp has been reviewed by George Norman on 14 Aug 2009. Based on the user interface, features and complexity, Findmysoft has rated Winamp 5 out of 5 stars, naming it Essential