Playing Music CDs
Playing a music CD on your PC isn't too different from playing it on a conventional CD player. You can play music while you're working with other programs.You can set your CD (or DVD) drive's AutoPlay options to make Windows detect various discs when you insert them.To play a music CD:
1. Insert a music CD into your computer's CD drive.2. If Media Player is open already, the CD starts playing automatically.or If Figure 10.4 appears, select Play Audio CD; then click OK.
Figure 10.4. Normally, you'll want to play the music CD. You also can rip tracks to your hard drive (covered later), open a standard folder window with an icon for each song, or have the CD sit in the drive silently.

Tips

Figure 10.5. Media Player features the standard playback controls used on VCRs and other consumer toys. You can drag the Seek slider to move to a different place within the item that's playing.

Figure 10.6. When you've turned on mini-Player mode and minimized Media Player, the playback controls appear in the Windows taskbar.

Figure 10.7. The playlist lists the CD's track names and durations. Point to a track for pop-up information, or right-click a track for properties and related commands (such as skipping tracks). The drop-down menu at top (labeled with the album name) lets you change the playlist. Click the album art for detailed album information.

1. On the Windows desktop, choose Start > My Computer.2. Right-click the icon for the CD or DVD drive; then choose Properties > AutoPlay tab.3. From the drop-down list, choose a disc type (Figure 10.8 ).
Figure 10.8. You can specify the action that Windows takes when you insert a specific type of disc, thus suppressing dialog boxes like Figure 10.4. Select the Prompt Me Each Time option if you don't want Windows to do the same thing each time. (Here, the drop-down list is hiding some actions.)
