Portable Music with Windows Media Player for Pocket PC

Think back to the early 1980's when the Sony Walkman first came out. You had to have one, didn't you? Cassette tape players had been around a while, but the Walkman was something brand new, not because of its recording technology but because of its size. It was small enough to take along with you. It let you listen to your music privately, anytime and anyplace.

Fast forward 15 years and a new standard for portable music is emerging -- digital music. Now the big news is the recording technology itself. Magnetic tape is on its way out and MP3 and Windows Media are becoming the buzzwords of the new millenium. This great technology is changing the way we record, buy and listen to our music. The digital music player is becoming the Walkman of the Internet Generation.

The new Pocket PC is packed with productivity applications, but it's also a lot of fun. Microsoft included Internet Explorer to let you browse the Web and Microsoft Reader to let you read a good e-book. They also included Windows Media Player for Pocket PC, which transforms the device into a digital music player.

Windows Media Player lets you play digital stereo music recorded in Windows Media or MP3 formats. A wide variety of music is available in one of these two formats. MP3 is the most popular format for music today. However, MP3 files are about twice the size of comparable WMA files and the sound quality of WMA is as good or better than MP3.

When you launch Windows Media Player, you are presented with the main control screen (Screen 1). Unlike the linear button layout on other music players, Windows Media Player organizes its command buttons around a central Play/Stop button. This makes Media Player's features easy to access. Another useful feature of this screen is the moving marquee below the top title bar. The moving marquee displays the title of the track you are currently playing. At the bottom of the main screen is a sliding volume control. A similar slider at the top of the screen tells you how much of the current track you've played. If you want to really get creative, Windows Media Player supports custom "skins." A skin is the colorful background image that changes the look of the application. The default skin for Windows Media Player is the four colored boxes you see in Screen 1. You can create custom skins or you can add pre-made skins. (I'll talk more on creating skins in a future article.)

 Screen 1: Windows Media Player's main control screen.

At the bottom left of the main screen you see the Playlist menu option. Windows Media Player uses this option to create ordered lists of the music you want to play. You can use Playlist (Screen 2) to select music and rearrange the order in which you listen to the music. You can add and remove songs from your playlist, and even create different playlists (e.g., Steve's Favorites, Easy Listening, Classic Rock, Hard Rock, etc.).

Screen 2: Windows Media Player's Playlist feature lets you organize your music into lists.your music into lists.

Windows Media Player also lets you assign the Pocket PC hardware buttons to specific functions. For example, I could assign button 1 (normally assigned to open my Calendar) to Pause the music, button 2 to move to Next Track, button 3 to Mute the volume, etc. This feature lets me change tracks, control volume, and many other things, with the push of a button. I no longer have to pull out the stylus and tap on the screen.