16th January 2001

Coming from the "Getting Rid of Real" Department, Lockergnomie Bruce Feirstein removes a resource-draining icon. RealAudio used to be the bee's knees. Now, it's more like a hornet's nest. With privacy issues and fluffy features bogging down the binary, it looks as though the player will work better on-demand. In the menu, select View, then Preferences. Toss your cookies in the Support tab if you're so inclined, but don't leave the dialog until you've disabled the StartCenter permanently. "Ignore dire warnings about the coming apocalypse." Turn it off; save precious memory for other (more important) applications. Another piggy? Microsoft's latest Windows Media Player. In Windows 2000, WiMP v7.0 (WMPLAYER.EXE) sucks up 10MB of system memory before it plays a file. Compare this to WiMP v6.4 (MPLAYER2.EXE) which initially takes up only 3MB. Don't come whining to me when you say your computer is too slow -- and I see that your System Tray has more icons than the average folder. Get real. Er, get rid of Real. Kinda.