Winamp The multipurpose media player
By George Norman - Software Editor
Added on 14 Aug 2009(1355 Views)



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



Link to this Review:


Software News
The Solution to Brute Force Attacks, and Where Most Malicious Sites are Hosted
A brute force attack occurs when someone with malicious intent goes though all the possible keys until the right one is found. Say for example that an attacked knows your username and needs to ...
11 Mar 2010
IE8: Safest Browser in the Internet Explorer Range
Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is the latest iteration of the Microsoft-developed web browser. It has more features than IE6 and IE7, it is faster than IE6 and IE7, and it is definitely safer to use than IE6 and ...
11 Mar 2010
Twitter Starts Fighting Malicious Links Via New Service
Because Twitter users were hit by a phishing attack late last month, the team behind the popular micro-blogging service has decided to take measures and fight back. Phishing attacks are nothing to ...
11 Mar 2010
As Apple Gives More Apps the Boot, EFF Presents the iPhone Developer Agreement
To the regular user, the iPhone is a wonderful platform on which the user can run quite a lot of useful, or not so useful, iPhone apps. To the iPhone app developer, it is definitely not all sunshine ...
11 Mar 2010
Choice Screen Gets Randomization Tweak
The browser ballot screen, or the choice screen as Microsoft calls it, has been getting a lot of press lately – and for good reason. Some 200 million Windows users in Europe that have...
10 Mar 2010
New Labs Feature for Gmail: Refresh POP Accounts
One of the great things about using Google’s email client, Gmail, is that you can keep track of several email accounts via Gmail. Emmanuel Pellereau, software engineer on the Google team, for example ...
10 Mar 2010
Recommended Tools



FindMySoft certifies that Winamp is SAFE TO INSTALL and does not contain any adware, spyware or viruses that might harm your computer or steal your information
Winamp does not contain any spyware, trojans or viruses and it is considered to be "Safe To Install". Embed Award
Options
Top Downloads
7. AIM
11. Nero
13. Picasa
14. Winamp
15. iTunes
19. eMule
21. WinRAR
22. WinZip
Link to us:
HTML code for linking to Winamp
Reviews
New Software