As far as we can tell t.here's no way to switch off the album art in Media Player. If you don't want to see it when browsing your collection, switch to the Details view. This will show your music collection as a list rather than as covers. If you have a small screen, this is a good choice because it allows you to see more albums at once. Click the Artist entry in the Library (if you can't see it, select the Library tab at the top of the Media Player window, then click the plus sign next to Library, and click Artist).

Click the tiny down arrow to the left of the search bar, then select Details from the list, as in the screens hot above. If you double-click on an artist in the list, you'll notice that it's gone back to the picture view, so do the same thing again - click the down arrow and select Details.

That setting will now stick, so when you view artists or albums, you'll only see the name and details, not the album art. You need to repeat the procedure for the Album view - click Album under Library in the left-hand column, then click the down arrow as above and select Details.

Of course, this won't get rid of the album art, which will still be on your hard disk. Under normal circumstances, the computer keeps it hidden from view, and as long as you have a relatively spacious hard disk (more than about 20GB), it shouldn't mean you lose too much space.

You can stop Media Player downloading new art by clicking ,the Tools menu (right-click any of the black border areas of the player to see the menu bar), then click Options. Click the Library tab in the dialogue box that appears, then untick the box marked 'Retrieve additional information from the Internet'. Beware that this might stop the player from automatically filling in artist names and titles if you rip music CDs in future.