Man… I just had one of those PC experiences that make you glad you’re a Mac user.

I was trying out the 7digital website for some new music and was pleased to find that they had a few albums by the band “Camel” which I have been looking for in digital format. I purchased them while I was on my desktop PC, set them to download while I was at work and didn’t think much of it.

Turns out they were WMA format and not MP3… What a stinky load of weasel poop. Not only are they DRM‘ed to within an inch of their life, there was no way to “license” the tracks except one at a time (all 20 of them). So after 20 minutes of repeatedly typing my user name and password to “license” the music I just purchased, I launch Windows Media Player to burn the disc.

Urk… mistake number two. For anyone used to the simplicity of iTunes, this is like like learning to program Java on a Chinese keyboard while wearing mittens (track order? What track order? Oh you didn’t what a 2 second pause between songs? Too bad). In addition, each track runs through a process of being analyzed before burning (presumably to see if I had a “license” for it) which means it takes about twice the normal time to burn a CD.

Defective by Design indeed.

Never again.