the programme has taken over the computer like the egg plant that eat Chicago and pops up un-asked all over the place. can I do anything to stop this or can I use other software?

Here's what I did: From the Tools menu, choose Preferences. In "On startup display" choose "Player only". Open the "Connection" tree on the left and click on "Internet Settings". Untick everything that says "send", "enable", or "allow". Tick "Only perform automatic services when RealOne Player is in use" (there isn't a button for "Don't perform them at all").

Then click on "Media Types" on the left and untick every media type that doesn't actually start with the word "Real". Most of them should probably be opening with Winamp, or you could use Sonique. This will take a while as there are lots of media types in here.

If that message centre crap pops up, choose Options->Personalise Message Centre and there are one or two things you can turn off (but you can't turn off Software Updates). There's more stuff to turn off in Options->Delivery Preferences (though you can't tell it to never check, you can tell it to check "once or twice a month").

This doesn't completely de-fang the eggplant, but it's as near to sensible behaviour as it's possible to configure it for.

Peter