REDMOND, Wash., Dec. 10, 2001 — Microsoft Corp. today announced results of an independent third-party study from eTesting Labs Inc. ( http://www.etestinglabs.com/ ) showing that the new Windows Media™ Player for Windows® XP is the fastest full-featured media player for common digital media tasks and uses fewer computer memory resources than other players tested. In a testing scenario encompassing starting up the player, initiating MP3 playback and burning six songs onto a CDR using Redbook audio format, Windows Media Player for Windows XP took less than half the time of RealOne and Real Jukebox. The complete test report is available at http://www.etestinglabs.com/main/reports/microsoft.asp .
The eTesting Labs report noted,
“We found that Windows Media Player for Windows XP was the fastest digital media player on the tasks studied in this report. It also consistently required the smallest amount of memory as measured by working set size.”
eTesting Labs compared the performance of Windows Media Player for Windows XP against the RealOne Tech Preview release and RealJukebox 2.0 Basic running on Windows XP Home Edition. Players were tested on their speed in starting up, playing music files and burning tracks to an audio CD. Windows Media Player for Windows XP dramatically outperformed other players on most activities:
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Windows Media Player for Windows XP is the only one of the tested products able to write to a CD at 8X speeds, and thus converts MP3 files to Redbook Audio and records them on an audio CD twice as fast as any other player tested.
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Windows Media Player for Windows XP starts three times as fast as any other player tested when launching from the Start menu.
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Windows Media Player for Windows XP initiates audio playback of an MP3 music file from the Windows Desktop 25 percent faster than any other media player tested.
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Windows Media Player for Windows XP initiates audio playback of an MP3 music file from the media library 35 percent faster than any other media player tested.
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Windows Media Player for Windows XP has, on average, less than half the working set size of any other player tested for the digital audio-related tasks examined, meaning that it uses fewer memory resources.
“Windows Media Player for Windows XP not only provides true all-in-one functionality for the broadest range of digital media activities, including DVD playback, it also delivers blazing speed,”
said Dave Fester, general manager for the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft.
“We listened to users, and we tuned our new player like a pit crew tunes a Formula One car. With Windows XP, you can spend more time listening to music and less time waiting.”
About Windows Media
Windows Media is the leading digital media platform, providing unmatched audio and video quality to consumers, content providers, solution providers and software developers as well as business, education and government users. Windows Media offers the industrys only integrated rights-management solution and the most scalable and reliable streaming technology tested by independent labs. Windows Media Technologies includes Windows Media Player for consumers, Windows Media Services for servers, Windows Media Tools for content creation, and the Windows Media Software Development Kit for software developers. Windows Media Player, available in 26 languages, is the fastest-growing media player. More information about Windows Media can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/ .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
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MSFT
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) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft, Windows Media and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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