* Can no longer detach Now Playing window. (Even though it's called a "Remote Control.")

* With the exception of the undetachable Now Playing pane, all important Pressplay client features are carried forward into Napster. Importantly, the "radio" stations still display completely interactive playlists that allow shuffling, manual selection, and seeking within tracks.

* While playing a radio station, users can initiate a stream from another window without removing or disrupting the radio playlist. The new track is simply inserted into the playlist.

* Library organization is effective without being innovative. Napster continues using Pressplay icons for indicating the status and rights of tracks.

* Napster is generally quicker and more fluidly operable than Pressplay was. Creating playlists, adding to them, accessing them, digging into your library — all is fast and intuitive. Dragging tracks from one pane to another is smoother and more inviting.

* Downloading tracks (as distinct from purchasing them) is handled more transparently than in Pressplay, which constantly nagged the user with confirmation and progress reports. During testing, aggressive simultaneous downloading and streaming proceeded without a stutter.

* Napster provides the finest streaming performance I have seen to date. Initial buffer time was consistently 2.5 seconds on an XP machine connected via residential DSL, with two other networked computers sharing bandwidth. In the same environment, intratrack seek time was a blistering 1.5 seconds. The entire track is available for seeking as soon as the initial buffer is complete, a blockbuster improvement over Rhapsody, despite the latter's massive hard-drive cache.

* Member sharing, Pressplay's biggest and most novel strength, is fortified and enhanced in Napster. Recommendations cross-referenced against member collections are displayed on every album page, a dynamic feature. Drilling directly into member collections from cross-referenced genre lists continues to be supported. From any track listing in a member collection, you can link to other users who have downloaded that track, and view their entire collections. In the library settings, you can save other members and follow the progress of their collections. Through Pressplay's life and into Napster 2.0, member sharing is the one feature that competes effectively with similar functions in KaZaA and Grokster.

* Overall, client performance receives the highest marks in attractiveness, ease of use, musical responsiveness, intelligence, and sheer pleasure.