Microsoft: 14 million player downloads

Microsoft’s latest Windows Media press release reminds me of the McDonald’s signs that list how many hamburgers the company has sold. Microsoft claims that in the 30 days version 9 of the player has been available, 14 million people have downloaded it (myself included.) And 3 million downloads of Movie Maker 2 have been recorded by the folks in Redmond.

The download numbers are not surprising. The Windows Media Player 9 is pretty cool and I haven’t even begun to explore most of the features. One thing I do like is the ability to slow down or speed up playback speed. This came in very handy while transcribing a Webcast the past couple nights. However, the original WAV file playback speed could not be modified, so I had to first encode into Windows Media format. After that, worked like a charm.