Re:Ogg and mp3

Hi Gene

Seems to me that it is reasonable to use Ogg for sharing
files in a small community of people most of whom will
be able to upgrade their players and are at least experienced
enough computer users to handle things like upgrades
and are motivated enough to do it. Even then it does
cause a delay - I delayed downloading and listening to
your .ogg file because I hadn't got a program that
played them.

It's partly the techyness of the upload. Also though
if one isnt' a computer program downloading junky there
is a tendency to not watn to make any change to your
system once you know it works unless sure that you need
it. Thi isnt' the sort of thing to worry about in that
respect but it is understandable. After all there is one
thing about it that would concern a newbie user.
In one of the dialogs there's a check box to associate
all your media types with WinAmp and it is preset
to selected.

But maybe you are quite happy with your existing palyer
for mp3s, and movies and so on. I can imagine a newbie
user mightn't understand the significance of that
check box or mightn't even know that it is wise
to check what a newly installed program will do to
your file associations. So they might install it
and then find that mp3s and everythign now show
up in WinAmp and they may not know how to get it
backto the wayit was before (may not even know
the name of the program that played them before,
just that it looked different).

That's just the sort of thing that can confuse
and even alarm a newbie user. So they are wise
considering their own way of looking at things
and a realistic assesment oftheir own techy
understanding of comptuers to be a bit
cautious about installing a new player in order
to play .ogg files.

So I think for the general public it is
rather more of a tricky point - is the
extra convenience of the smaller download
size a reasonable offset against the possibliity
of maybe causing problems for the users
setup? I think at any rate one in the
download link sectino of ones site one should
warn them about the possbility that
it wuold change your file associationas and
tell them to unselect that check box unless
they are sure they want to use WinAmp to play
everythign on their p.c. Probably you do that
I suppose.

Also for the general public, will they be
techy enough to handle an install at all
because for the first few months or maybe
year or so of a first computer for a non
techy user, they may never want to install
anything new because it is all too techy
for them, they dont' even quiteunderstand
the difference between a window, a program,
a file and an image, never mind fully
comprehending what it means to install
a new program - easy as it seems later on.

But for a small group of users it seems
a reasonable thing, certainly if there
are say only two or three sharing by e-mail
or a very small community. Between
the two there will be some point where
one decides the extra hassle of the install
isn't worth it. But if one is a strong
proponent of a new standard and are
advocating a change of course that is
another situation.

Anyway I'd have thought MMM is possibly
small enough apart frmo the matter of
not being able to listen to fiels
in libraries. If the librarian is
techy enough and they have the authority
to change their set up then fine.
But if it is just a small branch library
say, using a computer system rolled out to many
libraries and no local computer support
staff it isn't wisse for a local non techy
librarian to mess around with the player
of music files, and the file associations
for all the library users I'm sure, even
if pretty confident it would work - but
what if on the remote possibility that it
doesn't work and something goes wrong,
if not techy, what do they do then.... So
would just depend.

Robert