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Bad Software

"Wow, that sucks," pretty much sums up my personal experience attempting to sign up for Napster and download music.

I just bought the Creative Zen Micro because my iRiver -- which I otherwise like -- does not support DRM protected music. This means I can't go to the numerous online stores and buy music; I have to do it the old fashioned way by buying CDs and ripping them. A bad decision by iRiver, but I digress...

My out-of-box experience went like this:

1) First I tried to simply click the Napster icon in WMP 10. I was greeted with having to download a WMP plug-in, at which point it promptly warned me: "Large/Custom Font setting detected. To properly view Napster, you must use the Small Fonts setting". Ordinarily that would be grounds for aborting the install process and returning the application (had I purchased it), but I ignored the warning and went on. I didn't have a Napster account yet, but the installation experience proceeded to try to guide me through it... in a 200x200 non-resizable window. That didn't work.

2) So I fall back on the CD that Best Buy gave me with the Creative Zen Micro and attempt to install the full Napster software. Again I get a warning about font size, which I ignore, and go through the wizard and sign-up for a trial account using the promo code.

3) Now I go back to WMP and start browsing music. The interface isn't bad, but as soon as I try to do any kind of a search it crashes (in Napster's plug-in, not WMP 10's code). 100% repro. I can't search, period. Ok, yeah...

4) So I go back to the client-side Napster software and try to sign in. Oops, this version is out of date. I'm forced to download another 10 MB update (the above plugin was 5 MB). I try to install the update, and it tells me I need to un-install the WMP plugin I just installed. Do I do it? Ok, fine. After it installs Napster tries to run, but refuses to run, warning me that there's a temporary incompatibility with WMP, and to close WMP. WMP is already closed, but Napster still won't run. Oh, there's more text: if I recently closed WPM I have to... wait... Ok, so I wait and try to run Napster every few minutes.

5) Finally it runs, at which point it hangs for about 30 seconds, spiking the CPU. Oh, it's finally up. Let's do a search.

** Crash! **

I wanted to try their subscription service, but after this experience I will be spending my money elsewhere.

Published Friday, July 15, 2005 8:28 PM by tonyschr

Comments

# re: Bad Software @ Saturday, July 16, 2005 5:43 AM

Why not spend your money on the iPod and iTunes Music Store combo? It works great for me... at least you'll own your music instead of renting it, and well.. the process of installing, buying music and updating your iPod are incredibly easy.

or do you have a problem using a superior product from a competitor?

music addict

# re: Bad Software @ Saturday, July 16, 2005 1:51 PM

^^ I hardly think that was called for.

But seriously Tony, do give iTunes a try. It's a much better (and much simpler) piece of software.

DannySmurf

# re: Bad Software @ Saturday, July 16, 2005 3:16 PM

The iPod with iTunes is a great combination, and I have nothing against either.

My decision was based on the device itself (i.e. built-in FM radio is a requirement), and I like having the ability to choose where I can to buy music from. The ability to "rent" music is actually a huge plus for me as I've never had a big collection and this will help me try out a larger variety of music without spending thousands of dollars.

tonyschr

# re: Bad Software @ Saturday, July 16, 2005 11:22 PM

Why don't you try turning off "large fonts" (high DPI setting). The problem is Microsoft only recently started making this bearable for developers. So "large fonts" breaks many applications, not just napster. Better to just turn it off until Whidbey or Avalon gets adopted.

Josh

# re: Bad Software @ Sunday, July 17, 2005 12:51 AM

Heya

That does, indeed, suck.

Try Yahoo! Music Engine instead. It's cheaper, and works... even though it's still in beta. It also has a very interestiny - and cool! - radion streaming from Launch, which is a good way to discover new artists you like.

Michael Griffiths

# re: Bad Software @ Sunday, July 17, 2005 4:05 AM

Yahoo Music Engine. I bought a Creative Zen Micro just because of the service. These guys definitely have a winner in their hands.

Ram

# re: Bad Software @ Sunday, July 17, 2005 2:44 PM

Josh, I've been using 120 DPI for several years and I'm not going to stop now. :-) See my previous posts on this. (For what it's worth, I didn't notice any glaring visual problems with Napster under 120 DPI and I would also be quite suprised if that was the cause of the crash).

Yes, signing up and using Yahoo! Unlimited went much more smoothly, and that's the subscription service I'm currently using. It has some rough spots, like hanging for a little while every time you click "Add to My Music" from the context menu, and but overall it works.

tonyschr

# re: Bad Software @ Monday, July 18, 2005 6:32 AM

"A bad decision by iRiver, but I digress..."

The hell it is. To support DRM requires them to cripple the device. This is why the US version of the H.300 series is less capable than the non-US version.

DrPizza

# re: Bad Software @ Monday, July 18, 2005 10:04 AM

I think you should take music addict's advice and get an iPod....I've got one I'll gladly trade you for your Creative Zen. The Apple-only music store solution, craptacular iTunes software and frequent hardware crashes aren't what I was looking for when I bought the device. But to be fair, I've seen several other MP3 players and have played with several music store apps and most of them have annoying bugs. I think the perfect device for me would just show up as a mass storage device when I plug it in and i could freely copy unencrypted and DRM'd mp3,wma,aac,etc files to the drive and the perfect music store would be a simple web page where I put in my device id and download whatever music I want...no buggy software needed.

Ryan Rife

# re: Bad Software @ Monday, July 18, 2005 12:08 PM

DrPizza, IMHO iRiver should have made both versions of the firmware available. The trick is how to present that to users. The Zen upgrades the firmware on install based on options you choose. That's not an *ideal* out-of-box experience, of course, but it went OK.

tonyschr

# re: Bad Software @ Wednesday, July 20, 2005 5:33 AM

I got a Creative Zen Portable Media Center for Christmas and Napster was the first online music store that I tried. Their software is horrible. Not just hteir WMP plugin, but their Media Center interface. It was a nice idea, but they're tech support kept telling me it was "Microsoft's fault".

I am now a very happy user of Yahoo! music.

iPod? Whatever. It's tiresome to hear the whole iPod thing after having to live through the whole Mac thing. Like your iPod? Great. I like my Creative Zen. Good thing we have options as consumers. I celebrate my options.

I've found that on Yahoo! Unlimited, I get better performance if I set the "Add to my music" feature to simply save a link to the stream rather than download the music. Each time you hit that button, the default behavior is to download the album to your hard drive. I listen to it on three computers, so that's not really a good option for me (and it eats up a LOT of hard drive space).

In short, Napster built a nasty house of cards on top of Microsoft's DRM. I'm not sure why they didn't just use the DRM technology as-is.

An additional problem that I had with Napster was that the music that I saved to my device would "pop" after the first two seconds of EVERY song. Yahoo! doesn't do that.

It is my personal opinion that Yahoo! is the value/feature/bugless winner at present (in the non-iPod universe).

Michael Earls

# re: Bad Software @ Wednesday, August 17, 2005 2:49 AM

I also recommend a 60GB iPod and iTunes, and a Mac Mini. Then if you want to buy an album, order it online on CD from a site that does free delivery, and this will typically be cheaper than buying a download. Then stick the CD in the Mac Mini (which feels good) and wait for it to pop out again. Then plug in the iPod and wait for it to say "iPod update is complete". That's the UI. You don't have to press any keys or touch the mouse or anything. It's completely excellent.

And then if you want to get some track without buying a whole album, type the title in the music store. One click and it's yours.

Okay, commercial over. (PS. use the Mac Mini with EyeTV as a PVR as well, to get maximum value out of it... okay, that's it.)

I'm using IE7 beta 1, and I think the tabs interface is better than any other I've seen - the most important thing being the little pseudotab that teaches you how to create new ones. I suggest that instead of a blank page on the new tab, you should display a brief explanation of what the user just did. "This is a tab - you can use it like a separate browser window. [Click here to read more]."

I notice that IE remains very bad at retaining the favicon.ico for sites added to favourites. I have the Links toolbar under my menu, and the product just cannot seem to remember the icons. It's a shame, because in Firefox I find the icons really help to distinguish various sites at first glance much better than a mere text label.

Stig Bension