Convergence

As I have been living in the UK for a year (and had my Orange subscription for 12 months) I was suddenly eligible for a free phone upgrade, and ended up going for a Nokia 6230.

The phone is brilliant. It comes with all the features one can want in a modern mobile phone, and one of the new features is an MP3 player. Works like a charm with my ordinary MP3 files. It also plays AAC files (the Apple format). Music quality is decent, the menu system is poor, but overall it is a neat little extra feature to a solid product.

My one frustration is the of lack of a proper standard in the buy-your-music-online industry. iTunes use AAC, Napster WMA. I love the streaming features of Napster, and every once in a while I buy a track or two to move over to my Creative Nomad Zen. Now I wanted to transfer a track to the Nokia. No such luck... Even bought tracks from Napster are DRM protected, it is only their license that is more liberal. I could burn it to a CD and then rip it to MP3, and then transfer to the phone. Just that I don't want to spend the better part of an evening, including wasting a CD-R, just to listen to a track or two while walking. Blah.

So, Napster and iTunes and Microsoft and Nokia. I want convergence. When I buy a piece of music I want to play it everywhere, not just on devices from the right combination of vendors.