As you can probably guess from the title, this is an MP3 utility program aimed at beginners to the world of music on the PC. Do we need more MP3 programs, given the fair few out there presently? Well, that's a debatable point, but at least this new one from eJay has a positive slant towards the novice user to help clarify its niche in the market. And the other piece of good news is that it's cheap too, weighing in at just a tenner.

The first impression we gained of MP3 Easy was that it looked very similar to eJay's MP3 Pro software, the last release from the company. In fact the interface is pretty much identical, but for the fact that many of the buttons and options have been removed.

At the main screen you can browse through your hard drive on the window on the left, and when you open a directory which contains MP3 files they're displayed in the central window. A final window on the right is the playlist, and you can drag and drop any MP3 tracks into this from the middle window. Simple as that. Basic CD player controls are hosted at the bottom of the screen, with play, pause and so on, along with balance and volume controls.

You can play MP3s direct from your hard disk, or arrange playlists and play them, much as with any MP3 program. MP3 Easy also offers facilities to burn your own CD, providing of course you have a CD Writer (which the program automatically detects). At any time you can burn the current playlist onto a blank CD just by clicking a button - the whole process is handled pretty much automatically.

If you insert an audio CD you can "rip" any tracks onto your hard drive as MP3s, at a sample quality of up to 320Kb/s. The program is pretty fast when converting audio CDs to MP3 too, and it comes with an offline and online CD database for putting track names to your albums (or at least the common ones).

MP3 Easy works well, is easy to use and functional, although it doesn't sport much in the way of options compared to some of the more advanced MP3 players/rippers out there. For the beginner though, and especially for a tenner, this is a great little utility.

This is a well designed addition to eJay's MP3 range which targets the novice user successfully. It's easy to use and can perform the essential MP3 functions such as burning a compilation CD or ripping MP3 tracks onto your PC, along with playing MP3s, naturally. Perhaps most importantly, the price doesn't have much sting to it.