How Did I Get Here?

Thursday

Flipping through one of the magazines, one of the thousands I have that need to get read or my wife is gonna go a dumpin’, I came across an article that said that Windows Media Player came out with version 11.

A little history: I used to use WinAmp and was happy with it until Paul, my friend who works for Microsoft, clued me into the pleasures of Windows Media Player. I had used it a long time ago, wasn’t impressed, and left it for dead. He informed me they had done a lot of work on it and it was actually a good product.

I started using it and sure enough, I was impressed (although it still can’t interface with iTunes, obviously).

Since then, I’ve kept up with the upgrades and use it as my personal jukebox on my home computer.

One of the few annoyances that I had to put up with was that when you perform the Windows Update service, it doesn’t check your media player so when upgrades come out, you don’t know. Furthermore, when you pull down the “Check for upgrade” on the player itself, it only checks within its current series.

So when I had series 9 and then 10 came out, no amount of “check for updates” informed me that 10 was out. Granted, it was in beta but still.

The same thing happened today. A beta series 11 that they are going to include in the next generation of Windows (Vista) came out and I had to read about it. Then I had to go directly to Microsoft and download it. Annoying.

But I was excited that there was new software and I downloaded.

So far, I’m not too impressed partly because most of the whiz-bang upgrades are things I don’t use. I just about hit my limit with series 10 because all I really do is create playlists and play them in the background as I work. It seems that the skin and the interface are the only things that are really new for me.

I’m trying to keep an open mind because change is good but a couple of growing pains are really bugging me.

One thing is that when I open it, it’s on the “Now Playing” tab. This is great and the same as the older version. The only problem is that it doesn’t have any way to access the playlists. Before, there was a menu that you could pull down and there were your lists. The upgrade from series 9 to series 10 made things more difficult because series 9 left the last list you were playing on there even after you shut it down. In series 10, it comes up blank but at least you can pull down a list and click it pretty easily.

Series 11 takes the annoyance one step worse. It not only doesn’t load the last playlist you were playing like series 9 but it doesn’t provide you with a menu to choose it. You have to go to the library tab and choose the playlist from there.

This seems like a HUGE oversight. I mean, not even an oversight. You would have to go out of your way to NOT provide this capability. It’s like putting the car radio controls in your glovebox.

So to tell the truth, I’ve found NO advantages by upgrading, other than being able to say, “Hey, I’m using the Vista Media Player.”

That might not be enough. I might be going back.

Free Advice for Today: “Fight fairly.”