Using System Resources to Play Music
May 28, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Computers
One of the things I almost always need when I’m working is music. Not sure what it is but there’s just something about silence when I need to be moving and doing or thinking and processing. It’s been that way since I was a little kid and was told to clean my room.
Normally when I’m working on my computer I’m listening to either my own music I’ve ripped to my hard drive or downloaded legally; or I’m streaming some great music from Pandora into my headphones.
The only challenge is that when I’m working I’ve also usually got a number of applications open and running to be productive. Right now I have 8+ applications going.
I started wondering which method of listening to my music required more system resources. I was surprised by what I found.
- Pandora Desktop App: 103,868K Memory Usage
- Windows Media Player: 18,685K Memory Usage
I’d always heard and thought that Windows Media Player was really a system hog and I expected the Pandora streaming app to be a little lighter on the requirements. Pandora is using 4x+ more system memory to function though.
The one thing I didn’t think about checking to see was how much memory was being used for playing an audio CD via Windows Media Player instead of ripped MP3’s. May have to check on that later, but then I’d have to go dig out a CD from somewhere.
