I’m not usually one to endorse a Microsoft product, Windows Media Player 11 is an exception. When I first executed the new version I was extremely pleased to see that it utilized some of Vistas new GUI (Graphical User Interface) design and ultimately matched my current XP theme Zune Remixed (black). That doesn’t say much in the way of usability or functionality however, so let’s get into that. I loved the new layout for the “library”. There are three different optional views for displaying your library of songs and albums inside WMP 11, they are icon, expanded and details. I chose to leave it at default (expanded) when adding my song folders this was a benefit down the road.

I kept the “expanded” view for a few reasons, I liked the how it displayed the album cover (if applicable) along with all of the other information that “icon” displayed, only lacking a couple bits of info that “details” provided like “composer” and “Release Year”. Adding your songs is a breeze! Just click and drag the folder containing your songs into the WMP 11 Library screen it will automatically catalog all of your songs for you. It catalogs songs into artist and album. This worked out great for me considering I have about 10 folders containing a total of about 5000 songs, none of which are really organized by year, artist or album, Media Player takes care of that.

At this point it was time to burn a CD, since all of my songs are now organized, this makes it incredibly easy to scroll through and select the songs I wish to burn. Just click the “Burn” tab at the top of the screen and notice a new window pane will appear to the right. You will now click and drag the songs from your library into the “burn” pane and click the “start burn” button below.

It’s actually really THAT simple. So what are the drawbacks to WMP 11? Well, I can tell that on most systems running anything below 1GB RAM and a decent video card, WMP 11 might operate a little sluggish. Also, for reasons still unknown to me, when burning a CD, WMP 11 TAKES FOREVER! It STILL goes through and verifies each song, then “converts” and then “starts the burn process” like in previous versions of WMP. I invited my sister over to burn a couple cd’s to verify the usability for a normal/novice pc user. I was embarrassed at the fact it took about 45 minutes to burn 2 music cd’s. That is too long! There is quite possibly a way around this, but so far NERO blows WMP 11 out of the water when it comes to the actual burning process, WMP 11 wins over usability. All in all I give WMP 11 4 out of 5 stars because I feel it functions the way a Media Player should, It’s usability is supreme over competing players and It has some valuable added features. It lacks the fifth star only because of the slow burning process”.