Improve Your Media Experience with Windows Media Player 11

Improve Your Media Experience with Windows Media Player 11

Windows Media Player 11 is another new feature included in Windows Vista. Windows Media Player 11 has a deeply integrated music library for both online and offline content, with an interface that looks more like a Web site than computer application. And with a new integrated feel, Windows Media Player 11 makes online, network, and offline content indistinguishable. Windows Media Player 11 also connects to additional hardware easily and offers easy-to-use tools for following the process of any task (downloading music, burning CDs, synching music, or streaming video, just to name a few). You can learn more about Windows Media Player 11 at this Windows Vista Community Web page.

One of my favorite additions to Windows Media Player 11 is the Global and Sync Status tools. In older versions of Windows Media Player, you never really knew what was going on during a task. Isn't buffering finished yet? How's that sync going? Will all of this fit on a CD? And which songs can I put on there, based on the song's license? And, of course, why won't this song sync to my MP3 player? Windows Media Player 11 has ended these aggravations with Global Status and Sync Status.

In addition to the new status features, there are new search features too. With WordWheel, for instance, you can type part of the artist's name, song title, or genre—whatever you can remember—into the Search bar. The Library "prunes" through your entire collection with a query across relevant fields and offers up what options most closely relate to your entry. Here's an example. I've typed PA in the Search bar and selected Artist. There are four artists in my library whose name begins with Pa. The more letters I type, the shorter the list gets. It's a "smart" search and will change the way to locate data, including all media, on your computer forever.