Winamp 5.53
This post is a continuation on the series about finding the “Best Free Media Player for Vista”
Winamp really surprised me but not in a good way. Most people I know run this as their main media player, but I cannot stand it. The default UI was terrible. I could not find anything I was looking for without having to really search for it. The program seems like they made a basic media player then just started adding things to it placing a button anywhere it would fit.
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.
2 Responses to "Winamp 5.53"
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You were extremely harsh on your rating, and it seems like you just wanted to beat down on the most popular media player. A little customization goes a long way; at least on XP.
First of all, you are using the Modern skin. Using the Bento or Big Bento skins makes everything really simple and easy to use.
There is no minimize to tray, but you can make it not display in the tray at all, and have it just place an icon in the tray.
The most notable feature is its integration with an Ipod, which allows you to ditch Itunes all together.
How can the performance get faster? It isn’t slow by any means, and it isn’t really bloated. It has a lot of useless features, but nothing serious.
You can also configure global hotkeys with it, allowing you to skip the current track without ever moving your mouse, and even more.