Downloads Beta

Monikered after the Kurt Cobain/ Nirvana song "Smells Like Teen Spirit". (Call me Sherlock--My big clue to this was a low-res version of the famous video on the Web site!) Teen Spirit smells like a perfectly usable beta audio/video player with great features and lots of potential. All it really needs is a little help with the interface. Compared to iTunes, Teen Spirit's GUI is bit clunky appearance-wise, though equally easy to use. I also wish there more right-click context menus, tool tips, and better keyboard transport controls--not to mention a help file. But those are minor gripes considering the overall high quality of this program. This free program. I was impressed with the tight programming on Teen Spirit. By that I mean it's fast, takes up far less memory and disk space than iTunes or WMP, and is extremely stable. Teen Spirit never crashed once, even inside a virtual machine. The program's reliance on DirectShow filters (installed CODECs such as Windows .avi, .wma as well as third party efforts such as DivX), most of which are pretty stable at this point, probably has a lot to do with its reliability. Even so, it's still the only crash-free, cash-free media player I've run across--though I'm sure I'll manage the feat sooner or later. Other notable features include album and art lookup for audio files, a history of files played, a transparent mini-player mode, ratings and some very cool visualizations. With a little work on the interface, Teen Spirit could become a very popular iTunes replacement. I'm going to stick with it for now, since Apple apparently feels okay about using iTunes to install unrelated software such as Safari and Bonjour. Note: This program is donationware. It is free to try, but the author accepts and encourages donations towards further development. --Jon L. Jacobi