10 years it has been since the first winamp was brought to life. I myself have only known 1. I was introduced to it by Oscar, the other admin of this site after Itunes gave me the last problems i could handle. I at first did not care for it, but it did the job it needed to do and its job was to play music. not hog on my cpu and suck it dry like Itunes did. Along with having probably the worst updates in the history of updating software, horrible lag problems and then later not playing my music to 100% quality. I was fed up with it. As time went on, winamp was a great alternative to itunes. i ddint let it manage my music but that didnt matter. I just needed it to play music. After learning about the new 5.5 upgrade i decided to download it and try it myself. With new features such as portable mp3/device player support, album art, smart search, artist/concert news, browser support, mp3 surround sound, and even winamp controller from your own browser i was intrigued. At first i thought it was just a rip of itunes with the new layout. But once i added music and started playing tracks i knew it was way better. Plus new skin layout was nice. With everything you need on the left side. From library to portable device and cd drive access , it was very user friendly. With tabs for easy acces of video, visualazations, and a webbrowser. Now with a dash board you can edit and pick things you want to have. From artist news, tech blogs, my most played to even winamp skins and plug-ins. Searching through my music had no lag and was about in real time while bringing up anything with the name i typed in. Winamp also had a podcast support feature to which you can add your favortie podcast to your library to then sync with your devices. Video playback still was smooth but controls had not changed. That was one thing i was hoping for in the new Winamp. Browser capabilities were very nice and fast. Mp3 blogs loaded nicely and quickly scanned for music showing all songs available songs on the site to be played or downloaded. No skipping or loading problems, like i had seen with Songbird.

Overall the new winamp lives up to its name while keeping the same user friendliness and simplicity to the player. I highly recommend it to people fed up with itunes and/or looking for alternative media player. Especially with alll the great new features with it now. Now all it needs is to deposit my checks and winamp would be even greater.

Go download and check it out yourself at http://www.winamp.com/