Microsoft Windows Media Player 10

As an evolutionary product, Windows Media Player 10 is immediately recognizable as a member of Microsoft's Windows Media Player product family, and yet it also offers a fresh face to what has always been an overly complicated product. Windows Media Player 10, if you can believe it, actually offers a lot more functionality than previous versions of the player, but it presents much of that functionality in far simpler ways. For example, in addition to aggregating music and video files like previous versions, Windows Media Player 10 can aggregate pictures, Recorded TV shows, and other media, though that ability might be limited by the kind of PC you have, and which portable devices you interact with. The free media player completely overhauls version 9, offering a simple, clutter-free interface that reflects the influence of massive consumer and focus-group testing.

The new player's features are quickly accessible from easy-to-read toolbar drop-down menus. The menus are turned off by default at first, resulting in a streamlined look. Users can turn the menus on with a right mouse click.Organizing user libraries of purchased music and video, CD-ripped music, and recorded TV is much like using Windows Explorer, but even easier. Users can search by title, artist, album, or their own star rating. Playlists can be created quickly by dragging and dropping titles into playlists that appear as folders.Users can copy CDs into WMA or MP3 formats and then drag and drop them into a portable device or burn them to a CD. Windows Media Player 10 recognizes a wide array of portable devices (it integrates the necessary drivers for many of them) and promises seamless syncing.

The player recognizes and works with numerous online music and video stores, including Napster and MSN Music. Downloads from these and other stores are automatically stored and organized in the user's libraryThe software incorporates Microsoft's new Windows Digital Rights Management, also known as Janus. Previously, if you belonged to a subscription-based music service, you could access your music collection only while at your PC, says Erin Cullen, lead product manager with Microsoft's DMD division. With Janus, you'll be able to transfer that content to your Portable Media Center or to another handheld device such as your MP3 player.

Overall, Windows Media Player 10 is a huge improvement over previous Windows Media Player versions, though it still falls short of the competition in a few key areas. If you've bought into the Microsoft-oriented music world in any way, however--perhaps with a Media Center PC, Portable Media Center device, or by using a WMA-compatible online music service--you simply must upgrade to Windows Media Player 10. This release offers major improvements for discovering and buying, and subscribing to content online, sports an improved UI, and integrates nicely with a coming generation of portable devices. And if up-and-coming music subscription services, like that now offered by Napster, take off, the release of Windows Media Player 10 will be heralded as the watershed moment of what is clearly still a nascent market. That said, users interested solely in music playback will likely find little reason to abandon iTunes. And iPod users will simply ignore Windows Media Player 10 as they have previous versions.