I first used Winamp a few years back, when there wasnt much choice around. It did the job, played my MP3's and made sound come out the speakers. What more did i need?

Then MP3 hit the world harder than Mike Tyson in a grudge match. And every Tom Dick and Harry was making MP3 players. So the choice grew over night almost. And my trusty Winamp hit the recyle bin, to make room for Visiosonics PCDJ, (i only had a small harddisk back then), the latest and most adavanced MP3 player around then, because it allowed you to mix, etc. (see my review on pcdj for more)

I have recently downloaded Winamp once again, and found, not much had changed from when i had it all that time ago.

What is it?
Its an MP3 player. That about covers it. Nothing fancy, nothing out of the ordinary. It plays MP3s, and it plays them well. Fine for the everyday user who just wants to play some good tunes while writing a letter to their boss about why they missed work on monday. But to those of us who want something more, then Winamp as it stands, doesnt really offer many thrills.

However.. It is upgradable. The beuty about Winamp is the customisation available for it. A quick visit to winamp.com gives you all the skins, plugins you need, all offering various things, from simple visualisation effects, through to broadcasting, and mixing plugins. And skins ranging from plain black, through to Mercedes slk's.

It runs happily in your taskbar, or systray and plays away while you do what you want, and doesnt take up most of your computer power to run, like alot of them, Windows media player for instance, so benefits those with slower pc's or have a lot of software going at once.

The equalizer is very good too, and allows very good fine tuning to a song, for the perfectionist out there. If it could play 2 MP3s at once with pitch control and individual volume control, like PCDJ, then it would be perfect, but unfortunately, that requires all manor of plugins and just gets to complicated.

Cons with it? well, like i said, it tends to be a little unstable sometimes. Especially when it comes to dialup connections, i have found. Reasons i am not sure off, but i assume it is because it accesses various online services during operation and tends to cause tcp errors sometimes meaning browsing and email etc are impossible. However i am not sure what causes it, and it doesnt do it all the time, so i would only class it as a minor con.

Apart from that, it doesnt have any mojor cons i would say, like i said, its simple and effective, I dont love it or hate it. I use it mainly for just playing MP3 while messing around, which i think is its main design function.

One really big pro about Winamp, compared to most others, is there customer services. The guys there are friendly and seem to be out for a laugh, as well as knowing their stuff. When you email them for help, you dont get back a serious all technical response, you get back a very friendly, and informative response, which helps you, as well as making you feel like they want to help, and your not being a burden like you feel with others. Very good online help too i might add.

Overall, the guys at Winamp have got it right, forget your fancy gimicks that you never use, forget your stupid ads that flash up all over the place, it does its job and does it well, end of story. Well worth downloading.






Recommended: Yes