Tons of options, yet not the only one...

Pros: FreeRip is a great program, and it just simply works the way it's supposed to. It has tons of options (such as amazing bit-rate control and other such things), looks clean (a little cluttered, but plain and efficient), and does its job in a timely fashion (an average CD takes about five minutes on my extremely slow CD drive).

So, plain and simple, it does what it's supposed to. If you want a good ripper, there's no better place to look.

Cons: If you have any media player on your computer, chances are it already has the ability to rip CD's. Windows Media Player comes with every PC, for example, and it rips fine. So unless you really need control over your output music, there's no real reason to bother with the download, because it doesn't offer anything over the top for the mainstream music lover.

It also has several advertisements along the installation route, not too many, but enough to warrent a comment.

Posted: 28-May-2007 07:37:31 AM

Better than VLC? Yeah.

Pros: -I like movies, and this program plays them with aplomb. It looks fairly nice and clean, doesn't use up too much processor space when playing movies (I got about a third of my junky computer on the video, which is great for movie playback, and it should be lower for most users).

-It supports most if not all) of the files types I will ever need, and without downloading a single codec. A few minutes in with this baby and VLC was off my computer in and instant.

-It's only about 4 megs of a download, which is a little smaller than VLC's 8 mb or any music/media players that go well into the 30's. The only one I'd say is a rival to this program is Winamp, which can play movies, have the whole media player thing all at 6 mb.

Cons: -There are so many all-in-one video players out there right now, and none of them really do a better job. I'm going for this one because it's smaller and has a nice long list of files I KNOW I will use...but will I?

-It's only real use is movies, because it has no organization method for music files.

-The "play .avi files even if not finished" thing, while awesome and spectacular in concept, did not work for any of the files I attempted with the program. A three-quarters-downloaded movie would just stop within the first second and refuse to budge.

-There are a FEW skins, and none of them are worth downloading (all a bunch of iTunes or WMP copycats), so what you see in the screenshot is what you get for the most part.

Posted: 16-Jun-2007 08:51:45 AM

Windows and I-Pod-less? Fugedduboutit!

Pros: iTunes. Oh, boy. The program those hip little teenagers use once they get their Pods hooked to their computers down at Starbucks. The program's cool, right? It's sleek, fancy, and it's got some nice features for the Pod-lover set. Heck, even the podcast directory is worth downloading this for.

Cons: Except that if you are running Windows, this program will slow down your computer to no end. 1 Ghz, 2 Ghz, no matter what processor speed or how much RAM you have, everything falls to waste against Apple's sloppy Windows coding. To say the program runs badly is an understatement: most Windows programs can't function with iTunes sitting in the back.

Besides, if you don't have an i-Pod, don't bother; the programs' feature set is horrendous, forcing you to browse the only worthwhile item on the list, the music store. Of course, you need an i-Pod for that, so what's the point?

Get Winamp, Mediamonkey, or musikcube. This download is not worth the pain.

Posted: 19-Aug-2007 09:43:54 AM