There was a complete outcry over this one since it was max 64Kbps.
Windows Media, in the WMA format, can pull off in 64Kbps what MP3 does in 128.
WMP 8 does have an encoder built in for WMA, and I think it can do MP3 up to 192Kbps. It does not have one for MP3 anymore
However, right now, the licensing scheme in WMA 8 is raising serious havoc with my DVD software (Mediamatics DVD Express), and will not play my DVDs. When I upgraded to Beta 2 from 2000 Professional, I was playing full-screen DVDs on here. For a Pentium II/300, that was pretty cool
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I'm running the encoder on a Praxis CD to hear how it sounds. It's reasonably fast on a slow machine like mine, though it's got nothing on some of the super-encoders I've run on my primary work machine that can do a CD at 320Mbps in under 10 minutes
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This is balanced against the NIC test I did this morning, where I unplugged my Xircom Combo PC Card NIC and replaced it with a IBM Etherjet Cardbus NIC.
Not only did it reocgnize my card, it kept our Win2K domain credentials, kept me logged into the domain, and automatically reconfigured the NIC. It even loaded the drivers from the HD, without prompting me for the XP CD. It did this in under 30 seconds. I didn't have to log out or reboot.
I have never seen an MS OS actually reconfigure a network card without pain, even Windows 2000 Professional (which can and will hiccup when you do this because of how it binds Client For Microsoft Networks to a specific NIC).
We've been dealing with this issue with one of our senior people who uses the same laptop at home and at work, and who brought a NIC from home to use at work that would not work until we did some NIC configuration to get the new card to recognize Client For Microsoft Networks for our domain under Win2K (which removes most of the options). Windows 98 makes you reboot at least once to accomplish the same task, as does NT 4.0.
This was painless, and I've never seen an MS OS pull off near-seamless reconfiguration before (ok, I admit I clicked one button) when switching network cards, especially PCMCIA network cards.
Even the applications didn't hiccup (I tested with Outlook XP running, which when configured for Exchange Server uses more bandwidth than most servers).
However, getting back to this, I encoded a CD to test this. It not only encoded the CD in WMA format, it downloaded the cover art for it and associated it with the directory.
Nice feature, but I wonder what they did to mess with MusicMatch Jukebox or Real (especially RealAudio!).
For every GOOD thing XP has, it's got to have a downside as well.
Mitch