Home > Geekboy > Archives > 2006 > February > 09 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USYahoo! owes me a mouse
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It seems everyone’s got an MP3 player, but no one knows how to get the digital music party started.
You have three options when it comes to acquiring the musical goods:
1) Rip MP3s from your existing CD collection.
2) Download music from a legal “pay for play� site.
3) Steal ‘em.
Today we will begin looking at some of the more popular music download sites. I’ve only looked at one site, and the experience ended when I hurled my mouse against the wall in frustration, so, don’t expect this to be a glowing review. We’ll be hitting three more sites later if I don’t run out of mice.
YAHOO MUSIC MACHINE
Since I already had the required account, I decided to give Yahoo the first crack at getting my business.
I visited the Yahoo Music Unlimited site and noticed their program, called Yahoo Music Machine, only works with Windows XP.
Strike 1!
After supplying my credit card info, I downloaded the installer, which was so small I knew this would be a network install. This means you have not really downloaded a program in the traditional sense. Instead, you’ve just installed a list of files needed for the real program. Once you activate the installer it goes out on the Internet and downloads the many, sometimes from several sources.
This is actually a good way of doing things if you have more than one server, which Yahoo does.
Unfortunately, the install failed when it could not download a program component.
I surmise all the Yahoo Music Machine files are on one server, which is stupid if you’ve gone to the trouble of making a network installer.
Strike 2!
I took a break at a local Mexican restaurant and the downing of a couple of Texas margaritas improved my mood. Upon my return, the install worked.
Yahoo, true to their history, tried to take over my machine.
I selected “custom install� because I didn’t want all the bloatware Yahoo Music Machine is infested with – namely Yahoo Messenger and their web browser toolbar.
To be continued …
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