For many of us, music is a way of relaxing, of getting rid of all the problems and bad moments in our lives. If you own an older type of computer, with slower processor and less memory, you always have to make sure not to access programs that will "eat" all your system resources. For that, you need a music player that will allow you to use your computer for other applications besides it. You need to check out Cheap MP3 Player from Marc Bookmeyer. It's a free music player that allows you to create multiple playlists and consumes few resources from your computer.

The Looks

Once you access it, you will see a small grey window with three large round buttons. Next to them, there is a small button that allows you to choose the playlist you want to listen. Cheap MP3 player lets you create as many playlists as you want, but unfortunately you can't rename them or delete them, so you're stuck with those numbers and you have to think twice before making a new one. In the middle of the first rectangular panel you can see a blank area where all the songs added to your current playlist are displayed.

The interface of the program is easy to use and understand, but it can become quite annoying if you are looking for volume control buttons because there aren't any. You may smile when you discover that the small box next to the playlist button is actually the repeat function for the player.

The Works

As we mentioned before, Cheap MP3 Player has an easy to use interface with three large buttons. The first and third buttons can be used to jump from song to song without waiting for the track to end. The player offers you two ways to add music files to your playlist: you can use either the File menu of the program or the Drag and Drop support. This way you can easily access all the music files from your playlist anytime you want. The second button can be used to start playing or pause any song you have on your playlist. Click on the button once to play the song and click it one more time to pause it. If you want to start playing the song again, from where you have stopped it, just click on the button again.

If, by mistake, you press the Play button several times you will notice that the program does not answer well to your commands. The sound is delayed for a few moments. It's not a big problem but sometimes it can be a little frustrating.

You can't say the same thing about the missing volume control. It's quite funny how an mp3 player, be it of any kind, can be made without this major function. I'm not talking about bass or treble control, because I may sound too pretentious. So, you have to start using the volume control from your headphones or speakers.

Cheap MP3 Player makes it very easy for you to create a playlist. Go to File and select New Playlist. You will see that the area where all the songs were listed goes blank. Don't worry, you haven't lost the previous list, Cheap MP3 Player has just created a new playlist for you. You can switch to your former playlist by clicking on that small rectangular panel next to those three large buttons and select the playlist you want.

After you use Cheap MP3 Player for a while, you will see that you can do something else on your computer while you are running the music player, because it doesn't consume too many of your system resources. The reason for that resides in the simple interface of the program and the lack of other features or options.

The Good

Cheap MP3 Player really knows how to take care of your system resources. It has an easy to use interface, which makes it perfect even for those who don't have special computer skills, while the drag and drop support comes in handy most of the time, especially for Mac users.

The Bad

Unfortunately, Cheap MP3 Player doesn't have many options or features to play with. You can't change anything about the interface, you can't change the background color or upload new skins and the repeat box must be worked on immediately.

The sound problem, after you repeatedly press the Play button can be hard to deal with sometimes. But Marc Bookmeyer is aware of that problem, so we can hope that in the next version this problem will no longer exist.

The missing volume control is the biggest disappointment of Cheap MP3 Player. I really don't know how a media player can be created without this vital function.

The Truth

Although Cheap MP3 Player doesn't eat your system resources, it doesn't offer you anything else but a simple audio player without any control over sound volume, bass or treble. So, for those who can live without that, Cheap MP3 Player is perfect.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: