There are many tools out there designed to help you manage and play your music CDs on
your computer's CD-ROM drive. Most are simple variations on the basic Windows CD Player
theme and offer little added value -- they appear to be nothing more than "Hello
World" types of Window programming exercises from novice developers.
Axialis offers a different and more literal
approach to CD Players. If you've read our review about Axialis'
Professional Screen Saver Producer, then you already know we like this company a lot.
To begin with, Axialis truly understands the concept of the GUI. They know a GUI must
be intuitive from the moment it appears on screen. See below:
What does it look like? A complex board with switches and radio buttons?
No, it looks like the CD Player in your car, right? Bingo. Axialis gets it. The object is
not to strive for an original design in your GUI; it is to reproduce that which is
familiar to the majority of the people and let it evolve gracefully from there (See the CD
in the slot? Nice touch, eh?). The AX-CD Player is no exception to this rule.
Don't let the simplicity of the GUI design fool you either. This is a full
featured, value-added utility guaranteed to respond to all of your needs. Behind this
interface are hidden multiple menus and options to personalize your interface and options,
and a full-featured database to keep track of your favorite tunes and CDs. It even
provides support of web-based CDDB database servers to help you maintain your musical
database in the best way possible.
Like other Axialis products, the tool also features the ability to update
itself over the Internet to the latest version -- for free. This in itself makes
this tool a must have and too cool for words.
