No More Real Audio
As my cousin Drew will happily tell you, Real Audio and RealOne - the AOL/Time Warner spyware, resource hog that plays media files on your computer and is generally required for many streaming audio and video feeds - is a vile, horrid and terrible application (Drew's words, not mine, but appropriate, nonetheless) RA and its cohorts eat a lot of memory and they tend to dial home a lot, telling the AOL people much about your computer using habits. Well, now you can live without it and still enjoy RA, RM, and other Real Audio files with Real Alternative 1.1, a freeware application that is spyware and adware free and works just great. I found it driving around on Tinyapps a little, freeware focused blog. Real Alternative installed very simply and worked like a top on my Win 2K system. I uninstalled Real Audio, downloaded the small Real Alternative file, used only the standard default install selections, except to add the plug-in for Mozilla, and then went to town. The test? I immediately went to This American Life and opened a recent episode and it began to play instantly with nary a hiccup. And my system resources that I am always checking, increased by 10 megs of ram when I removed Real Audio. Life can be simpler, you just have to hunt and peck around.
posted by majikwah @ 11/19/2003 05:38:00 PM
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