[evil_walnut]

Windows Media 9 series is the latest Windows Media Player being released by Microsoft. I believe Microsoft is releasing this in the fall of 2002, but no one can be sure. We all know this, because they bumped XP SP1 from winter 2001 to Late 2002. They also moved Longhorn from late 2002 to 2005.

Windows Media Player 9 series build 2848 is the latest leaked version that I could get my hands on, and to my knowledge, it is the latest leaked period.

With minor improvements from earlier builds and major changes from earlier versions, WMP9 is my favorite Media Player overall.

It would take a long time to post all the changes in the new build, but...

You can customize the color of the player in full mode. When you minimized WMP9, you can have a toolbar in your Taskbar that has a compact control panel for WMP (Play, stop, etc). You can access the "Now Playing" settings by accessing a menu from a button in the player, rather than having to go into the View menu.

check it out for yourself! Links are provided by many beta sites on the web, or the famous IRC.