Winamp: Sometimes the small companies do it best

I've used NullSoft's Winamp as my music player of choice for years. It's a free lightweight media player and it does what it does very well. I've never seen it crash. It has always been responsive and quick to start up. And it has an easy-to-use EQ which I always configure to my liking for a particular computer and speaker setup.

Over the years many other media players have come along and they have evolved. Some will automatically download album art when you put in a CD, and they certainly have a lot of other "neat" features. Although honestly I found most of it was extra fluff that I didn't need. Winamp, on the other hand, has taken on many updates and revisions but it's strength is still the fact that it's a simple, efficient, and easy to use music player. I love the fact that Nullsoft has not turned it into bloatware.

For some reason, for a little while I was using one of Winamp's rivals, Windows Media Player on my work computer. I'll tell you what, it's like comparing a 2,000 pound Lotus Exige to a plump 3,500 pound Mustang GT. Winamp is just so "lightweight" and quick to respond to my every request.

Digging deeper I uncovered a shocking difference between the two players. For those of you who like numbers, I ran each one to see how much memory each player would consume while simply playing an MP3 (no visualizations), and running Winamp in "classic" mode.

Here are the results:
Winamp 5.35: 7,608 KB
Windows Media Player 11: 66,508 KB