However Opera’s still has that ace up its sleeve. By typing a ‘g’ in front of the search you will search Google. So “g osGuide.net” will search Google for “osguide.net”. I can’t begin to tell you how useful this is. This would be pretty weak if you couldn’t search other search engines as well, but of course you can, by default you can search:

• g – google
• y – yahoo
• a – ask
• z – amazon
• w – wikipedia
• e – ebay
• s – yahoo shopping
• b – bitTorrent
• h – browsing history

You can also add any other search engine you like. Just go to Tools > Preferences > Search and you can view all of these default search engines as well as add any you like or change the key used for these search engines. The second is the classic quick search bar which is located next to your address bar. This style of searching is similar to that of IE, FF, and Safari. It also basically works in the same fashion as the other browsers however it allows you to choose from the same 9 different search engines by default. The third search style is Opera’s speed dial. A great search location because its on every new tab you open. By default it searches Ask.com, but it can easily be changed to any that you like. To do this Right click on the Search bar > Manage Search Engines > Click on the search engine > Details > check use as speed dial default and you can set it as your overall default search as well.

Personally with only the address bar I have all the searching power I could ever want. I can quickly search Google or turn around and quickly search Wikipedia without changing any settings.

EDIT: if you are looking for some excellent other search engines smashing apps recently released 13 Most Unusual Search Engines You Should Remember

Songbirds ease of use, many features, and sleek look make it my choice as the Best Free Media Player for Vista. It easily beats out Foobar2000, Media Monkey, Musikcube, and by far Winamp. The only media player to come close was Windows Media Player 11.

So get out there download a copy of Songbird for yourself and enjoy.

You can read the all of the software reviews below.

Songbird
Windows Media Player
Foobar2000
Musikcube
MediaMonkey
Winamp

The only reason not to use songbird… System Resources. If your computer is already taking up to much system resources just running vista then you might want to stick with Windows Media Player. It uses a fourth of the system resources so you won’t slow down your computer any more.

A very usefull feature, that is not to common, is the “Jump to” feature. This is a simple search feature that allows you to start searching for the title of a song, or name of a band, and as you type it returns matches. An excellent way to find the song you are looking for, as long as you remember its name and how to spell it.

Songbird also has Firefox build in, Its very appearant when updating, installing addons, or even when browsing in it, go figure. Maybe thats why it uses such a rediculous amount of system resources (65k+) it does however help when getting addons for songbird, because you never have to leave the program.

Another great feature is the built in music stations and mp3 search engine (But I see some legal problems eventually happening with that). The music stations allow you to set up favorites so you can quickly find the ones you like.

My Suggestions:
Fix the system resource problem. 65k+ is rediculous for a media player. Thats 6 times as much as musikcube and 4 times as much as Windows media player. Songbird should merge with Miro as one all around media package, That would really be something to look forward to.

My rating: 9/10

Summary:
- Good clean and simple UI but way to much like itunes
- Great miniplayer
- Excellent Jump to Feature
- Firefox built in
- Resource hog
- Just released version 0.6 as I was writting this
- Lots of easy to access addons

The best feature of Foobars UI is the ability to change it any way you want. You can split area into smaller areas, change a specific listing into a different one or anything that meets your fancy. I cannot stress how nice this feature really is. To do this go to View > Layout > Enable Layout Editing Mode

Like songbird Foobar has a built in search feature allowing you to quickly find music that is in your library.

A really simple feature that I havent seen in any other player is a button that lets you play a random song. I am not talking about a shuffle setting, every decent player has that), this button just lets you play any random song. You no longer have to start the first song in your library then his next, to get a random song. I am really surprised more players do not have this.

My Suggestions:
The album view is pretty bad, It needs to be redone, its to hard to use and not very visually pleasing. Another suggestion is that there is not a minimized version, or minimize to tray option. The resource usage is around 30k thats not terrible but its not to good either so some work here would be good.

My rating: 7/10

Summary:
- Most user friendly UI (with the exception of the Album view)
- Excellent ability to customize layout
- Search feature
- random song button
- bad album view
- no minimized version or tray version

Just like Musikcube the songs fade in and out for smooth transitions. Whenever a new song is played while in the minimized mode a small popup is shown to tell me the name of the song.

One of the better features of Media Monkey is that it has six modes for viewing the songs. I can quickly find songs I am looking for with the appropriate mode.

Media monkey also has quick ways to view podcasts and burn cd’s. I did not try either of these features so I am not sure how well they actually work.

Media Monkey by far uses to much system resources. It was hovering around 40k.

My Suggestions:
None, Its a commercial product of course the free version won’t be all that good.

My Rating: 5/10

Summary of Media Monkey:
- Good variety of viewing modes
- Easy to understand UI, but not very good looking
- Able to minimize to tray, or to a Minplayer mode.
- Good Song transitions
- System resource hog.

I love the fact that it minimizes to the tray by default. No addons needed, I hate my music players taking up a space on the taskbar, I have enough other stuff there, I don’t need more.

Another small thing that I really liked is that one song quitly fades into another so you are never without music, so now there is no sudden changes from one sound to another.

On to the UI. Its very, very simple, and it takes all of about 10 seconds to figure out, which is a good thing. However its really old looking, especially for vista. A simple new theme or style would greatly help this software out.

Another bad thing is that I don’t think this software was completely ready for vista. I ran into quite a few bugs, and it crashed a couple to many times.

My Suggestions
Stabilize it. This is one of those programs I will go back and try in about 6 months to a year to see if they have fixed it. I surely hope so because little guy has lots of potential to be an excellent lightweight media player.

Rating: 6/10

Summary of Musikcube
- Simple installation.
- By far the fastest to add music to library.
- Fastest to load.
- Nice song transitions.
- Minimize to tray by default.
- Very clean and simple User Interface.
- However Not very visually appealing.
- Does not take advantage of vista’s file ratings.
- displays popup showing the new song being played.
- Very low amount of used resources.
- Not stable on vista.

I did however like the fact that you could shrink the player to fit just at the top of the screen. Really thin and it only has the minimal amount of buttons. It also lowered the amount of system resources, from about 21k to 11k, whenever you minimize it.

For whatever reason winamp has a large online community, with lots of different skins and addons. Sadly I wouldn’t even say winamp is usable without downloading a new skin.

My Suggestions:
Its time for a rewrite. A better default UI is really needed, as well as faster performance. Personally I will be uninstalling this and not be re-downloading this for a really long time… if ever.

My Rating: 4/10

Summary of Winamp:
- Horrible User Interface
- Nice minimize to top of screen feature
- No minimize to tray
- resource use is ok, but nothing impressive
- Needs a complete rewrite badly.

The UI is friendly and easy to use, and Since windows media player is part of vista it still alows you to minimize it to the taskbar as a tiny media player, which is great I use this all the time.

Windows media player was the only media player that also managed videos, tv shows, and pictures as well as music. However I don’t user it for anything but music.

There are 8 different ways to view your music, These have helped quickly locate a song their fair share of times. Another great feature is the auto playlists, letting you view only your favorite music. Only bad thing since I let the music play on random almost every song is rated at least a four star, the song doesnt have to play very many times before wmp decides to rate the song four stars which can be pretty annoying.

My Suggestions:
Add ways to be able to mix the different views like the other media players. So i can see a short list by album and a list by song at the same time. It just seems that wmp is missing something that I cannot put my finger on, but otherwise wmp is great.

My Rating: 8/10

Summary:
- Good UI, its clean and user friendly
- Great minimized version
- Handles videos, pictures, and music
- 8 ways to view music
- Bad auto rating
- Good auto playlists
- Good system resource usage

For quite some time I have been using Windows Media Player 11, it covers most of my needs as a media player, but I still feel like there is still something missing. So I have downloaded a couple of other free media players to see which one is the best for a vista user like me. I have been using these media players for the last month give or take a bit.

Now before I start evaluating each one some things to note are that I am on a 64bit Vista os with a Core 2 Duo processor. I also have quite a bit of songs that I have bought over the years, that each program must be able handle.

So on to the programs. I will be comparing:

Foobar2000 0.9.5.3

Media Monkey Free version

Windows Media Player 11
Read the Review

Musikcube 1.0

Songbird 0.6

Winamp 5.53
Read the Review

Basically I pulled up osguide.net’s audio section for windows and downloaded all the media players, so that I could truly find the “best” one.

Another side note: Itunes is not included in this because I cannot stand it, it is ridiculously slow on windows and IMHO a piece of crap, it has crashed way to many times. So Itunes is out of the question and not even being reviewed.

So over the next week I will be writing reviews on which media player I personally think is best, for general music listening.

Well I am back from a week in the Mickey Mouse world of Disney, and I am going to share an excellent site I recently came across.

Grooveshark Lite is an excellent site to listen to your favorite music all for free.

It works basically by you typing in the name of the band you want to hear, it will then return all the songs it has on the artist and allows you to play the song or add it to a list. It lets you view the results by album as well which can help you find songs from artists who have been around for a while.

The quality of the music is much better than most internet radio sites. Its not grainy and the downloading is very responsive. There is not more waiting forever for the song to buffer just to find out the player decided to stop working(damn yahoo music… terrible). The user interface could not be much better as well. It is done entirely in Flash so it is very fast and very slick, but it is not to busy or distractive like many flash sites can be.

However there are no ads on the site, and I see no way for the site to generate income. So this site might not be around for very long, but who knows. I hope it will because this is by far one of the best free music sites I have come across.

Visit Grooveshark