WinAmp does OGG without any plugins and so does musikCube. 

how is iTunes nice? It's HUGE. It's got that shitty brushed silver cool thing going on that I hate. I hate these enormous thick menu bars and space wasters all over the place that seem common to all of the two Apple programs I have seen on PC (the other being the HORRENDOUS Quicktime.)

I don't care if iTunes has got really great functionality since I only want a program to play music files unobtrusively in the background (not guess what my favourite tunes are or allow me to buy files from the internet).

There's also the whole issue I have with Apple in general - mainly brought about by mac lovers who think that anything Apple makes is automatically cook and brilliant. Fair enough, their design is better than MS, but I'm sure they still have the same greedy corporate mind - despite what Apple fanboys seem to think. 

yeah, i imagine winamp has ogg now, but i got foobar for that a couple of years ago. i never ever really liked winamp either, so i never thought of switching later on.

as for itunes, like i said, it seems to be pretty good for resources, but yeah, the interface is large. i tend to keep it minimized in the tray icon and just bring it up to switch songs once in a while so that really doesn't bother me at all.

(not guess what my favourite tunes are or allow me to buy files from the internet)
frankly, i don't ever remember it doing that. i installed it, saw a popup talking about the feature, closed it and never saw anything like that again. the option *is* there to go buy music off the net, but it doesn't come up unless you ask it to (you can click on it), so again, not an issue for me.

really, it depends on how you listen to music. if you listen to your entire collection at random, or small lists, or one song at a time, etc etc
when i'm not particular about what i want to hear, i like to leave itunes on shuffle and have it play anything at random. when i get selective, i pull out mplayer32.exe and only switch songs when i'm bored of the current one. if i want to hear a small list, i'll usually throw it together in foobar, because i find it's faster to gather songs in different folders together with it (just drag and drop). 

another good winamp replacement

http://koti.welho.com/hylinen/apollo/ 

You can modify almost everything.
Plugins: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=21105
Gallery: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=30988
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=31027
http://foobar.nub4life.net/columns/pafiledb.php?action=category&id=10

It's not really easy though. I just got the Indietorrents Foobar:
http://webreakstuff.com/stuff/itfoo/
and modified the playlist look. 

Itunes is nice for sharing you're music over a local network, lots of people use it at my work, and it's nice to browse around their playlists without actually configuring anything, not sure if that's easily possible in winamp...

But still, I think winamp is the best player, the interface is so nice, as are the keyboard shortcuts, I love the 'jump to' option, and the queuing stuff, I use it alot. 

iTunes sux. it is recourse hog. And all hype is just annoying. Sharing music? what a novelity
Just open the folders: all the albums in neat folders. Neatly sorted by the filename.
Again Apple making big deal feature out of nothing.

Winamp is handy and sounds fine with MAD plugin
foobar is still better sound for audigy/2 cards
Apollo sounds ace aswell (best sound Q imho) 

is a bloody resource hog. 

iTunes - good for playlists and collections
Winamp - good for quick or moderate listening 

Don't forget you don't have to use the latest version... Winamp 2.x was much faster, that was back before it all turned to shit (performance wise). 

2.x is fast and lean, but it doesn't have any Library functions whatsoever. 

Shoutcast (internet radio) and BASS module (_correct_ mod,s3m,xm) support besides mp3 and wav.

Winamp5 hogs yeah. :C
It seems less so with old skins tho.

Happy new year etc, I'm off for many days. Don't drink alcohol just for the sake of it. :) 

and it works.

Just missing shoutcast and my german Gotham Radio (Mainly uninspired mass for teenagers with black makeup, but there's occasionally good stuff.) 

I know there were/are winamp plugins although the ones I tried were a bit buggy (a couple of years ago)... 

what sort of stuff would they be considering ?

I havent bought a new compy in 2.5 yrs so I'm sure there's tech out that I've never even heard of. It'll primarily be a gaming machine but should be able to do regular stuff too.

Also, bear in mind, that oz wont have the latest tech stuff that's available in US/UK (or if they do, it'll be ridiculously expensive). 

I bought :

3.06ghz Intel Pentium IV
128MB Radeon 9800 PRO
160GB Seagate HDD
74 GB Western Digital HDD
Abit IS7 motherboard
Altec Lansing 2.1 Speakers

+ generic Case, taxes, PSU, etc.

= ~1400 USD in 2004

It runs Far Cry at 1024x768 + details high with no issue

Runs Doom 3 at 800x600 medium/low detail with some hiccups.

I bought from Newegg, so I don't know if you'd be able to find a comparable system, but I suggest it because it's been a year and some months, and it seems to be keeping up just fine...so factoring in time and geography, it shouldn't cost you too much more to build a similar system. 

I bought :

3.06ghz Intel Pentium IV
128MB Radeon 9800 PRO
160GB Seagate HDD
74 GB Western Digital HDD
Abit IS7 motherboard
Altec Lansing 2.1 Speakers

+ generic Case, taxes, PSU, etc.

= ~1400 USD in 2004

It runs Far Cry at 1024x768 + details high with no issue

Runs Doom 3 at 800x600 medium/low detail with some hiccups.

I bought from Newegg, so I don't know if you'd be able to find a comparable system, but I suggest it because it's been a year and some months, and it seems to be keeping up just fine...so factoring in time and geography, it shouldn't cost you too much more to build a similar system. 

It told me it timed out before I made the second press of the submit button!!! There's no way it got through if my connection timed out!! Fuck it. 

I don't know if you have considered a laptop, but they are exceptionally convenient. The prices aren't too bad these days, and neither is the performance. You can get hard core graphics cards like the GeForce 7800 go in a laptop, for example.

I have a Dell XPS 2, which wasn't exactly cheap, but was definitely worth the money I spent.

Your comment about oz being behind with tech makes me wonder if you are prepared to order from the US. I was going to get my XPS from Dell US, since it was a fuckload cheaper (and another 512mb of memory was 1/4 of the price quoted by Dell UK! �400! HAHAHAHAGOFUCKYOURSELFHAHAHA!) but since I have a cousin who has a business I was able to get my machine tax free in the UK, which evened the price out a little... didn't get the stupidly expensive memory upgrade though.

Wireless networking is unbelievably awesome if you have a laptop, btw :)

Anyway, with a laptop you will get less performance and pay more than you would with a desktop machine, but they are just so handy! 

...I bought my system from Infinity Computers in Brunswick about a year ago... they've got a store in Dandenong near you.
http://www.infinitycomputer.com.au/
Click on the download greenguide ad link to see their latest stock systems. There was no problem taking one of their stock systems and getting the RAM upped (I think I doubled it to a Meg for around $100)... delivery time was not delayed because of it.

Software is not included in their prices.

I suggest them because I had no trouble with their sales interface and have had no problem at all with the system. Also, because of their site, I was able to walk in and ask for exactly what I wanted, knowing exactly how much it should change the bottom line.

As to new things you should be looking for, I heard a rumour that having PCI (-E)? compatible components means you can do things like run dual graphics cards etc. But perhaps someone more technically savvy might want to comment on that.

Cheers! 

I listen to CDs. They tend to play music quite well. 

I thought you would be one of the vinyl hardcore :)

I have cds of most of the music on my pc, but I listen to mp3s purely because of convenience. Can't move hundreds of cds around with me very easily. 

a few more specific questions now that I've had a little look myself :

- how much RAM is needed for newer games (say d3 and q4 and other more resource intensive games). Is 512 mb sufficient or do you really need 1 gig ?

- anything specific feature wise I should look at in terms of motherboard ?

- intel or AMD ?

- graphics card wise, I'm ok to splurge a little since it's been a while. So Radeon X800, X850, X1800 or Geforce 6800,0 Geforce 7800.

I know's there's reviews out there but if anyone has any of those graphics cards, what's their experience with them, especially compatibility with older stuff and performance with newer stuff. 

a question about WS monitors.

I'm just going by me experience of WS tv's and movies where if a movie is not WS, it shows with black bars on either side.

Is it the same for games ? If a games is not WS compatible, does it show on WS screens with bars on the side ? 

Get as much ram as you can! It's fairly cheap (with the exception of the notebook ram at dell for XPS systems, which is/was bizarrely extortionate) so get lots. 1gb minimum, but why not just get 2 and not worry about it ever again (until HL3 comes out and needs 4gb to run without stuttering on level loads, yet still appears to run on much the same tech as Half-Life 1).

I have Intel Pentium-M, which is their good notebook processor. It's rated at 2ghz (HL2 rates it at 700mhz...), but is more efficient than a desktop processor due to less wasted cycles and is supposedly compareable to a 2.5ghz desktop processor.

However, I've heard lots of good things about AMDs current desktop processors, and I've had no probs with them in the past so you might want to check them out. I think they are still cheaper than Intel chips, and supposedly outperform them in most games (though not rendering scenes in Max, multimedia or multi-tasking.) You might also want to have a look at dual-core chips, such as the pentium D, and it's also worth noting than AMD have the only 64bit x86 chips at the moment.

I don't really have a clue when it comes to gfx cards, but I currently have a Geforce 6800 ultra Go (256mb). There are newer models (7800) of the GeForce cards out at the moment, which are supposed to be quite nice, but I don't know how they compare to ATIs stuff. I think it depends largely on which games you play the most, as the Doom 3 powered stuff is supposed to run better on Nvidia, whilst Source powered games run better on ATI. However, I doubt there is much difference if you are buying a new PC as anything should run nicely :)

As for Widescreen, my drivers allow me to configure how to display non-wide images. You can set the image to stretch to fill the screen, keep the correct aspect ratio (4:3) and stretch to fill it vertically, or leave it at normal size and have a black border.

I just have it stretch to fit the screen vertically if it is too small. However, since my display has a native resolution of 1920*1200, this gives me a few minor headaches, as I have to run at either 1920*1200 or 1600*1200 to avoid picture distortion associated with stretched images (this is common to all LCD/TFT displays afaik, not just laptop screens). Older games don't always support high enough resolutions, and there can obviously be performance issues when running modern games at ultra high resolutions. 800*600 is not too bad looking, since it's half of 1600*1200, but it's not ideal :(

Some screens handle stretched images better than others, so it is worth checking this out before you get a new monitor.

Also check how fast the monitor updates if you are getting an LCD/TFT screen. If it doesn't update fast enough, games can blur a bit. I notice this a bit when playing games with dark foreground objects and a light background - monsters often blur against the blue sky in some Quake levels, for example. It's a fairly minor trail, and I can still make out what's going on perfectly well - it's not like the whole screen goes into bullet time or anything.