Real Alternative

Our cool program pick is "Real Alternative", a substitute for "RealMedia."

RealMedia is a software format for downloading audio and movies. It’s become an extremely popular format for websites to distribute multimedia. But it’s a rather intrusive program. An early version of RealMedia I downloaded ‘took over’ my computer by substituting its unzip utility for mine. It never asked me for permission to make those changes to my computer’s settings and forced me to watch its advertisements whenever I wanted to unzip any files, whether they were RealMedia related or not. I found this rather offensive and removed the RealMedia program from my system and avoided downloading any multimedia files in RealMedia format. Later versions of the RealMedia drivers do not have that feature, but have other intrusive features. For example, each time you boot your computer the RealMedia control panel appears on your screen. If you want to unclutter your desktop you have to manually close the window. That’s intrusions which I will not tolerate on my computer - I want my computer to do what I want it to do, not what some software developers wants it to display.

Fortunately when something so intrusive exists there are folks who will develop alternatives. The "Real Alternative" drivers are substitutes for RealMedia’s drivers. They don’t install any background processes or advertising. The program lets you use any audio player you wish.

Real Alternative can be downloaded from http://codecguide.com/about_real.htm

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