Lean CD Player is a tiny tool that allows you to play audio CDs without wasting system resources on a bulky media player.

Despite its compact dimensions (it's slimmer than a regular window title bar), Lean CD Player still provides plenty of features. You can pause and resume playback, for instance; fast forward through a track, or jump to the next; select any track you like in a couple of clicks, or eject the CD entirely. (A screenshot on the author's site explains how this works.)

And there are some surprising extras, too. If you turn off your PC during playback, for instance, then LeanCD Player will carry on where it left off when you next reboot. And hotkey support allows you to control the player through keypresses, so you don't have to worry about the mouse at all.

The real reason to use Lean CD Player is its lightweight nature, though, and that was very obvious on our test PC. Playing an audio CD in Windows Media Player required 23.4MB of RAM (private working set) for us, but Lean CD Player consumed only 2.5MB, so if you're running an underpowered system then this could be a very easy way to help.