Notify CD Player

Notify CD Player makes a great addition to your desktop as a small but powerful replacement for the standard Windows 95/NT CD Player. The client offers all but one of CD Player's features and capitalizes on two of its biggest deficiencies by adding traybar icon support and plug-in support for the Internet CDDB database. Even with the database plug-in, Notify CD Player takes up less than 100 Kb of hard drive space and uses on average less than 1% of your system's resources. The application resides in the traybar notify area of the Windows taskbar and uses graphical icons to portray the player's status. Moving your cursor over the icon will report the name of the CD, the artist, the current track name, and the elapsed time of the track (or one of three other user-definable options). You can also program Notify CD Player to perform different functions based on the number of times the icon is clicked on. For example, you could program the player to begin playing the current CD or advance the CD by one track (if it is already playing) with one click of the left mouse button, toggle between pause and resume play with a second click, play the previous track with another, and stop play with a fourth. A right click on the traybar icon will pull up a menu with all of Notify CD Player's functions and options. Finally, there are several options in the client that can be modified to create the specific layout of the right click menu that best meets your needs and preferences. As with DiscPlay and CDValet, perhaps the best feature of Notify CD Player is its support for the Internet CDDB database. Unlike these other two clients, though, Notify CD Player's support for the database is not built into the client -- you need to first download a free plug-in module in order to make use of this important feature. After the plug-in has been installed, each time a new CD is inserted into your drive Notify CD Player contacts the CDDB database of your choice and downloads the CD's track and title information. This information is then saved in the client's local database, so that the next time you load the CD the information is already available to the player. Additional features in the Notify CD Player include repeat and random play (single disc only), programmed play capabilities, multidisc support, and numerous configuration options. While Notify CD Player does lack some of DiscPlay's more advanced features, the only truly critical feature missing in Notify CD Player is the inability to random play multiple CDs on a song by song basis (a feature also missing in DiscPlay but included in the standard Windows CD Player). Yet when you take into consideration its best selling point -- the fact that it is freeware -- Notify CD Player becomes a no-brainer upgrade for the standard CD Player if you have a single disc CD-ROM drive and an app that still merits considerable attention if you use a multidisc drive. Pros: Free upgrade for the standard CD player, attractive interface, integrated CDDB and traybar support Cons: Lacks some of the more advanced features of DiscPlay and multidisc randomize on a song by song basis For the latest information on Notify CD Player, check out: http://cws.internet.com/32audio.html#cdnotify apps conference Main Menu