14 DAY TRIAL // "Do PCs make things really easier or more complicated these days?" When it comes to this apparently simple question, people tend to divide in two oppositely-thinking parties. One claims that things are indeed a lot easier due to PCs, whether it comes to automation in factories and other places alike or at home, when using the PC for personal entertainment.
While accepting their reasons, let's hear the other opinion, that of people who claim that PCs make life overall more complicated, just because at the same time with PCs solving a lot of problems, the personal computer and its world brought certain types of troubles and mishaps.
I won't take sides in this "battle" but I just can't help adding that the truth is a combination of these two "theses". So I prefer to think about the Winamp Deskband as a solution to a problem which appeared while solving an older one: a taskbar-located toolbar to control an already highly- "shortcutted" application? hence the rather funny subtitle for this article.
The Looks & Works
Basically, the Winamp Deskband is another controller-toolbar. What made me want to check it was the curiosity of seeing how it works. Well, I can't say I was disappointed, because I wasn't. When I run Winamp I usually keep it in the system tray, so to access it I need to either push the multimedia buttons on my keyboard (when I am at home) or click the icon and then operate the Winamp the well-known way. Moreover, to see the name of the artist and song (provided I listen to something new or something that I can't exactly remember) I'd have to hover my mouse over the tray icon.
Well, with Winamp Deskband I simply gain better access to controlling Winamp by means of customizable dedicated shortcuts for the essential commands such as Next, Previous, Play/Pause. The artist name and song title also scroll in the area of the toolbar so when needed, I just look aside and read the info without having to interrupt my work. And this can be a time saver for a person who usually listens to music while working (as I do).
The design is indeed very stylish and it also supports a fair amount of customization. Skins are not really skins, but rather different looks for the command buttons of the Winamp Deskband. It automatically runs on the Windows' native color scheme so you get my meaning as for what I've said before on skinning. The only thing you can do is mess a bit with the colors for some elements but that's about all. Buttons have been drawn in the minimalist-style but they are still readable, especially if you choose a bright color for them.
Speaking about customization, there is a long list of buttons you can choose to add in the toolbar. Due to reasons regarding the potential size of the toolbar and the ease of use I needed I preferred to keep the minimum default settings. But if there's no one satisfied by that little, no less than 21 command buttons can be added... The time counter which accompanies the scrolling text can be set to show the elapsed time or the remaining play time or even the system time, just as you might wish.
Each of the commands present in the Winamp Deskband is shortcut-assignable, with hotkeys like WinKey, CTRL or ALT or different combinations between them and the rest of the keyboard. Just be careful not to choose Windows traditional shortcuts.
Each time a new song begins or when you adjust the volume, a screen-wide bar appears showing info about the new track or the volume level, mostly in the TV OSD manner. To my surprise I also noticed that the Winamp Deskband volume-buttons work with the PC's master volume and not the Winamp's one. You can add non-Winamp options to Winamp Deskband such as Shutdown, Hibernate and so on. I couldn't find the need for such "deep integration" but hopefully other users will.
Overall the Winamp Deskband is a nice piece of code whose real meaning I guess remains to be defined by each user, according to how he/she perceives the way it does/doesn't help. For me it was absolutely not a must, I wasn't feeling at all the need to shortcut my way to my Winamp experience...nevertheless it's cute.
The Good
For those who like their PCs loaded with lots of nice looking gadgets supposedly improving their human-PC interaction I am sure Winamp Deskband can easily represent a very cool asset. It runs on very low resources so it's not a burden to your computer and it looks really good. It has been carefully developed and I have got absolutely no error while testing it and this is obviously good.
The Bad
Nothing bad to say about this extremely simple software because it just can't go wrong unless serious mistakes have been made during its development.
The Truth
If you're a fan of cool and cute-looking things that do "small tricks" and make you PC "look" better, then the Winamp Deskband is surely one of your favorite thingies. Even if you're not a fan of such kind of software but you think it could save you some time, you could give it a try. And if you're just a maniac sworn to do everything by exclusive means of shortcuts, then you definitely need this Winamp sidekick.
