I use WinAmp to play mp3 files but whenever I try to play a file the audio is skipping tracks and not understandable. I am running a 486/100Mhz computer with 16mb of RAM. Is my computer too slow so I can’t play mp3 files?

The problem you are facing is that when the computer plays mp3 files it has to decode them in a very fast time, this takes up a lot of the CPU usage. Mp3 files give CD quality music and they are rarely over 4mb (depending on the length of the particular song). Having this quality in such a small file means that the data in the mp3 file is extremely compressed thus taking up a lot of the CPU to decode (uncompress) the file. To fix your problem, first defragment your hard drive and then close all non-essential applications running in the background of Windows. If this does not work then load WinAmp and go into the menu in the top-left hand corner of the window, click it and go to Options > Preferences (or just press CTRL-P). Click on the ‘Audio I/O’ tab, in the Input Plug-Ins box double-click ‘Nullsoft Nitrate MPEG Audio Decoder’ and click the ‘Decoder’ tab. Un-check the ‘Allow Stereo Output’ check-box if it is ticked, in the ‘Quality’ section click ‘Quarter’, and in the ‘Decoder Mode’ section click ‘i486, K5, non-MMX Cyrix’ then click the ‘OK’ button. Now WinAmp is on its lowest quality settings so it should work. If it does but you want better quality go back into the settings and fiddle around with them yourself until your personal preferences have been met.