[geeks] New Low

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Thu, 30 May 2002, Joshua D Boyd wrote:

> I thought that using Microsoft Windows Media Player 7

WMP7 is about the worst multimedia player I've ever seen.  It goes out
of its way to keep your CPU at 100% load--never imagining that some
people might listen to music -while- they're doing other things.  I'm
staying at 6.4, and, even then I just use it to play video files.

> to play CDs sucked.  Well, the machine I'm currently working on is set
> to use Creative Lab's Play Center 2 to play CDs.

Creative Labs' software sucks unbelievably worse than Microsoft's worst
malware.  There is -never- a right time to use a Creative Labs'
application, when the same thing can be accomplished through someone
else's software.  I'd even use Microsoft's SBLive! drivers if they
supported EAX and SoundFonts decently.

> Wow.  This is so ugly.

It's not (bad) software!  It's (bad) art!

> I spent three minutes trying to figure out where the play button was.

I'd say that user interface is a lost art over at Creative Labs, except
that they'd never gotten it.  Even the crapware that shipped with the
original SB16 sucked.

I wouldn't use their shit at all, except that their hardware is great if
you want a single card that is excellent for games, but doesn't totally
suck for MIDI.

> I think I'll have to bring in something else to use.  FreeAmp is
> almost good (if it would only support autoplay).

If you're using Windows 2000 or XP, use the CD player applet
(cdplayer.exe).  It's quite good.  I use WinAmp, mainly because I like
one-stop shopping for all my music playback.  Both WinAmp and the CD
Player applet support autoplay.

WinAmp also has Ogg/Vorbis support, if that's your bag.

--Jonathan