Music streaming is popular. The most popular choices are Amazon, Beats, Deezer, Google Play, Grooveshark, Itunes Radio, Mixcloud, MySpace Music, Pandora, Rdio, Slacker Radio, Sony Music Unlimited, Soundcloud, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Xbox Music, and even YouTube. Wikipedia lists 57 music streaming services. Some are no longer in operation. Of those that are still running, not all offer a free option. Some are available only in specific countries or regions. Some are available only on a single platform, while others have apps for all major operating systems and mobile devices. With all those choices, why would anyone need an MP3 player on their computer?
Good reasons exist. Maybe you just prefer to be in charge of your own music, or you don't want to burn bandwidth on streaming audio, or you don't like the commercial interruptions in free services and you aren't willing to pay a fee to remove the commercials. Whatever. In that case, you need an MP3 player.
The go-to MP3 player used to be WinAmp. It's still available even though the application is no longer being developed. Reports persist that WinAmp will be back someday, but attemtping to visit the WinAmp website currently results in a dead end.
The best I can say about the Windows Media Player is that it's already installed with Windows and so it's free. Comparing the Media Player to other applications is like comparing Microsoft Paint to Adobe Photoshop.
Windows 10 users can obtain the Groove Player from Microsoft. Previously called Xbox Music and Zune Music, Groove is a streaming service that comes with a reasonably good player appllication. It can be downloaded for free from the Windows Store. The downside is that Groove will repeatedly attempt to convince you to enroll in the paid service.
The Itunes player is free and nearly essential if you have any portable Apple music devices. There are ways to get music onto an Ipod without Itunes, but the methods aren't exactly straightforward. I have experienced so many Itunes disasters that I won't even consider installing it on any computer I own.
MediaMonkey can sync music on IOS devices and the free version is a good music player. Most usesrs will probably want the paid version, though, because it includes smart playlists and automatic library organization. I have the paid version, but recently encountered MusicBee.
Like WinAmp, Music Bee can easily handle large libraries. It also supports plug-ins, including those desgined for WinAmp. It can automatically retrieve lyrics for songs and allows users to create smart playlists.
Foobar2000 wins the tiny footprint prize. Installed, it's just 3MB. It's feature set is limited, but it can be customized so that users can add features such as audio encoding and more versatile playback controls.
VLC is an outstanding video player, but it's also a decent music player. If you're already using VLC for movies and you don't want a separate application for music, give it a try.
It's been a long time since I was able to read, write, or speak Russian with even minimal proficiency and that's one of the reasons I've been watching the on-line lanugage teacher, Duolingo, waiting for the promised Russian lessons. Well, Russian is now available in beta. It's a promising offering and, because the alphabet differs from what English uses, it's giving me the opportunity to investigate Windows as a multi-language operating system.
The organization's moto is "We believe everyone should have access to education of the highest quality - for free." About 50 people work for the Pittsburgh-based company that was started by a couple of PhDs, Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker. Currently there are some 100 million subscribers who are learning languages ranging from Danish and French to Spanish and Turkish. And Russian, of course. There are also courses that teach English to native speakers of many other languages.
The Duolingo website says that an independent study by professors from the City University of New York and the University of South Carolina found that using Duolingo for 34 hours is the equivalent of one university semester of language instruction.
The on-line materials can be used in conjunction with classroom instruction and users select their own pace, from extremely slow to insanely fast. I got started over the Thanksgiving holiday and tried testing out of the basic level. No such luck. At least I remembered the full alphabet (33 letters instead of 26).
The lessons jump from asking the student to translate words or phrases that are spoken and shown on the screen to typing what you hear to translating spoken or written English to Russian. How does one type in Russian using an English keyboard? There are ways and I'll describe some of those in the next section, but the ingenious thing is that the lessons recognize transliterations. The user can type "papa" and Duolingo recognizes it as "папа". When Duolingo uses a word for the first time, you probably won't know what it is. Guess. If you're right, you'll be rewarded for getting the correct answer; if not, you'll be shown the right answer and Duolingo will work the term into the lesson several more times.
Or don't guess. New words are clearly indicated and you can hover the mouse over them for clues.
The Russian lessons are still in beta so they're not available on mobile devices and you'll occasionally find something that's a bit puzzling.
Being able to have transliterations understood is fine, but being able to type in Cyrillic characters seems to be a better way to learn the language. I found a couple of way to accomplish this. Both are easy to set up. One is easier to use than the other.
Using the Language section of the Windows Control Panel, you can install a new language and keyboard layout. This is extremely easy, but then you have to find out where the keys are on the keyboard.
I accomplished this by opening a picture of my keyboard in Adobe Photoshop, blanking out the letters on the keys, and then adding the Russian characters. This isn't particularly difficult either; it took less than an hour to accomplish, but the Russian layout rarely places letters that sound like their English equivalents on the same key. The Russian K sound is on the English R key, the Russian N (Н) is on the English Y key, and the T and M sounds are on N and V. And there are all those letters that have no English equivalent: Ц (tse), Я (ya), Ш (sh), Щ (shch), Ж (zhe), and Ь (мягкий знак, or soft sign). This might not be the best option unless you want to master touch-typing in Russian.
Maybe Google has a better idea.
Google Input make it possible to type transliterations in English (ya ni russki shchpion) and have Google return the true Russian spelling: я ни русский щпион. The advantage is that you don't need to train your fingers to use the Russian keyboard layout, but you'll see Russian spellings instead of transliterations. If your goal is to learn how to read and write in the language, this is clearly an improvement.
In case you're wondering, the statement claims that I am not a Russian spy.
I have installed both support for the Russian keyboard and Google's Russian input. Switching between the various input systems is easy -- WinKey + space bar toggles through the options. So one moment I'm able to type in English and then switch instantly so that I can type по русский.
One of the first things I noticed about the Duolingo approach is that it doesn't spend time explaining how nouns are declined in Russian. Many languages have nouns that are considered to be masculine, feminine, or neuter. This is not a concept of English. To make the situation more complex, the nouns vary in form depending on whether they are acting as the subject of the sentence, the object, or one of several other possibilities. Instead of explaining this, the program simply uses the nouns in their proper forms.
Something else that was clear from the beginning is that Duolingo uses terms that haven't yet been introduced to the student. These become clear in context. I remembered enough from my classes 30 years ago to recognize ест (yest) as the third-person singular verb for "eat". When I didn't remember a word, it appeared in several subsequent interactions so that I would begin to recognize it. This strikes me as an intelligent teaching method, one that mimics the way people learn language as children.
If you'd like to learn a language or renew your skills, check out Duolingo.
Some people are. I don't understand this, but there are some actions you can take if you're in that group. Although Microsoft will eventually force the issue, it's possible to forestall the change.
No method exists within Windows 7 or 8 to turn off updates that will eventually lead to Windows 10 unless you want to turn off all updates (including security updates), something that most security experts say is not a wise thing to do.
Changing the update policy to download, but not install, updates might work if you're willing to examine each and every update that arrives to determine whether you want it or not. The problem with this is that it's sometimes difficult to comprehend the update description unless you have experience as an operating system developer.
Another option that I've heard about but haven't tried is a 3rd-party application that claims to block Windows 10. I haven't tried it because I have no computers that I want to maintain on an outdated operating system. The GWX Control Panel probably writes changes to the Registry, so creating a restore point would be prudent before installing it or using it.
If you already have a "$WINDOWS.~BT" folder in the root directory of the boot drive, the update process has started and you'll need to take some additional steps. $WINDOWS.~BT is a hidden directory so Windows File Explorer won't show it. Here's how you can find it:
If the command prompt displays "C:\$WINDOWS.~BT>", the directory is present.
AddictiveTips has some suggestions for dealing with the update process if the directory exists. Again, I haven't done this myself, but the instructions, written by Fatima Wahab appear to be complete and correct.
If nothing has downloaded yet, you MIGHT be able to head MS off by following the reservation cancellation procedure described on the SuperSite for Windows.
Some people have told me that they're waiting for Microsoft to eliminate all of the operating system's bugs. They're going to have an exceptionally long wait. Bugs are present in all software and always will be. The most serious ones have been resolved and the ongoing preview program that distributes fast-ring and slow-ring updates to volunteers help MS find and resolve them before the general release is pushed out. As with other software publishers (Adobe, for example), the trend is toward Agile development, which creates faster release cycles.
My primary computer remains on the general release, the notebook I use for emergency backup is on the fast-ring preview release, and the Surface tablet is still on general release, but I'm thinking about moving it to the fast ring.
Backup provider Acronis has announced an update to Acronis True Image Cloud and Acronis True Image 2016. Improvements are based on customer feedback, the company says, and reflect a growing demand for the ability to move data from desktop and notebook computers, smart phones, and tablets to the cloud.
Acronis General Manager Gaidar Magdanurov says that the two top problems users face are damaged or lost devices and running out of disk space on their devices. Magdanurov says "the latest Acronis True Image makes it easier than ever for the family IT manager to protect multiple devices and keep all their precious photos and data safe."
Acronis True Image Cloud includes unlimited cloud storage for backups and a dashboard so that one person can manage the backup and recovery for all PCs, Macs, and smart phones or tablets that run on Windows, IOS, or Android.
I described the previous version of Acronis in October and found it to be a highly usable system that provides block-level copying of data for disk image backups that can be restored if a local hard drive crashes, as well as file and directory backups for data.
The restore function allows users to restore a full image backup to new PCs or Mac computers, including to dissimilar hardware, and migrate the complete operating system, applications and data over to the new disk or new computer.
The Try & Decide features offers a way to safely test new software, drivers, and system configurations with an ability roll-back to a previous system configuration if something doesn't work as expected.
Acronis True Image Cloud with unlimited cloud for 1 computer and 3 other devices costs $100 per year, 3 computers and up to 10 devices can be backed up for $160 per year, and backup for 5 computers and 15 devices is $200 per year. For those who need only local backup and restore, the price is $50 for a single computer, $80 for 3 computers, and $100 for 5 computers.
For more information see the Acronis website.
