Shadow Skill
9th December 2004, 11:01 AM
So often we remark on the rather massive amounts of crapware that permeates the windows operating system including of course Windows itself. :P I think it is important to point out a positive experience with a windows based software....
I just purchased one piece of software I can truly say is excellent and worthy of praise despite it being a bit overpriced Anapod explorer not only performs its most important function [managing my music collection and importing it to my Ipod.] it performs it very well, much better than Itunes, Xplay,[which is simillar to Anapod except its a much weaker program.] and all of the other freeware I have tried using with my Ipod. It even allows me to copy my music from my Ipod over to my harddrive for backup purposes which is great since I managed to break my computer's Itunes database while experimenting with a back up method. It even allows me to keep both the files on my desktop and Ipod in perfect sync with each other by making sure all of the songs on both drives match. Now on to perhaps the best features of Anapod:
1. A streaming daemon that allows you to pipe your music into the player of your choice without the need for any extra plugins for the software you use, assuming it has native support for http streaming. [I use winamp in windows which has an excellent Ipod plugin capable of syncing with the Ipod if you want to turn winamp into a total Itunes replacement.]
2. A streaming Daemon that allows you to stream your music to another machine through a browser based interface, kind of like when you access a router. [According to the developers it "requires" IE to be installed to work but I plan on trying it in Linux with my laptop just to see if I might get lucky.]
Now for the things I do not like:
1. The fact that it uses IE as the gui..mainly do to a near reflexive hatred of IE itself more than anything else. :)
2. The fact that it does not apparently include any native cd ripping tools despite it being able to transcode files into the various supported playback formats except AIFF I think. I personally prefer an all in one solution for this sort of thing especially when one also has to deal with database tags.
3. It can be alittle cumbersome at times since it is relying on IE as the front end instead of having its own front end like Itunes or even Ephod which present a somewhat "cleaner" interface.
I would like to see a built in cd ripping utility and a cleaner interface in general. [No more IE front end damn it!] The introduction of tabs would be nice since the web browser look is a good idea. Tabs would also make things alittle less cumbersome [tabs can make almost anything better. :P] Lastly of course I would love to see a linux client made available straight from the developers.
I just purchased one piece of software I can truly say is excellent and worthy of praise despite it being a bit overpriced Anapod explorer not only performs its most important function [managing my music collection and importing it to my Ipod.] it performs it very well, much better than Itunes, Xplay,[which is simillar to Anapod except its a much weaker program.] and all of the other freeware I have tried using with my Ipod. It even allows me to copy my music from my Ipod over to my harddrive for backup purposes which is great since I managed to break my computer's Itunes database while experimenting with a back up method. It even allows me to keep both the files on my desktop and Ipod in perfect sync with each other by making sure all of the songs on both drives match. Now on to perhaps the best features of Anapod:
1. A streaming daemon that allows you to pipe your music into the player of your choice without the need for any extra plugins for the software you use, assuming it has native support for http streaming. [I use winamp in windows which has an excellent Ipod plugin capable of syncing with the Ipod if you want to turn winamp into a total Itunes replacement.]
2. A streaming Daemon that allows you to stream your music to another machine through a browser based interface, kind of like when you access a router. [According to the developers it "requires" IE to be installed to work but I plan on trying it in Linux with my laptop just to see if I might get lucky.]
Now for the things I do not like:
1. The fact that it uses IE as the gui..mainly do to a near reflexive hatred of IE itself more than anything else. :)
2. The fact that it does not apparently include any native cd ripping tools despite it being able to transcode files into the various supported playback formats except AIFF I think. I personally prefer an all in one solution for this sort of thing especially when one also has to deal with database tags.
3. It can be alittle cumbersome at times since it is relying on IE as the front end instead of having its own front end like Itunes or even Ephod which present a somewhat "cleaner" interface.
I would like to see a built in cd ripping utility and a cleaner interface in general. [No more IE front end damn it!] The introduction of tabs would be nice since the web browser look is a good idea. Tabs would also make things alittle less cumbersome [tabs can make almost anything better. :P] Lastly of course I would love to see a linux client made available straight from the developers.
