Gazette reader Charles M. writes:

Dear Dennis,

I have Windows Media Player installed on my system, which is okay for the majority of media files I play. A few of my friends have tried Rhapsody, Real Player, Dell MusicMatch, and such, and have urged me to use these players on my own system.

If I decided to use one player versus another, don’t I have to uninstall the others? If I don’t, and put the others on hold in the recycle bin, will it impede my listening on my Windows Media Player? How do I uninstall these players, if that is what I need to do? I purchased this system (a Dell Dimension 3000 with XP) about 6 months ago, and am still in the dark on a lot of things.

My response:

There are a few things to clear up with respect to your question.

First and foremost: It’s important to understand that many of the media players on the market today compete with each other. They do this by silently reassociating your media file types once the player has been installed on your system (unless otherwise specified, but it’s not always up-front and as simple as that).

So, for example: if you use Windows Media Player to play .AVI video files and then decided to install Real Player so that you could play .RM [Real Media] video files, Real Player will attempt to re-associate the majority of *all* your media files, including .RM, .AVI, and many others. Real Player is notorious for associating itself with darn near everything once its installed on your system, and past versions have proven to be extremely difficult to customize so that it *only* opens .RM files and nothing more.

And, Second…

[Continue Reading Which Media Player Should I Use?]

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