Ah, another chapter in the “DRM Sucks” book. Microsoft, now all but finished screwing over its music customers (and no, I don’t mean with the very invention of the Zune – ZING!) with the fact that the Zune is crippled from a music sharing perspective and doesn’t support their own PlaysForSure DRM, has now announced that their old MSN Music service – the one that they’d rather scrap entirely instead of roll into the Zune Marketplace, is going away.

It was bad enough when MSN Music purchasers, whose music was loaded down with PlaysForSure, discovered that they couldn’t copy that music up to their shiny new brown Zune, and that they’d be out in the cold there. Now, the license servers that allow them to authorize computers to play the music they paid for are going under as well, which means that MSN Music owners will never be able to authorize another computer to play their DRM-ridden tunes again.

If they get a new PC and try to copy their music over to it? No dice.
If they upgrade their system to Vista from Windows XP? Nope, sorry.
If they have to replace the hard drive and copy data in from backups, or reinstall from scratch? Nuh uh.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in the “iTunes is king” camp, and although I love the iPod, I think the closed Apple-to-Apple system of content purchasing is a little outmoded. I also don’t particularly care for Apple’s DRM, although they don’t particularly make it hard for you to remove. (Fact of the matter is, with any kind of DRM, no matter who the company is, if you, a music owner, have DRM protected music or movies, you can find yourself in this situation.) At the same time though, this is inexcusable. Microsoft is essentially telling their customers, “Thanks so much for all the money, sorry about loading you up with files you won’t be able to use, but hey, there’s always Zune Marketplace, where you can do this all again!”

No thanks. Complaints about the Zune aside (that article is a trip to read, by the way), this is kind of sad. If it bodes well for MSN Music owners, maybe Microsoft will compensate them somehow (although sadly I don’t hope it’s with more DRM-ridden music or discounts for it) or give them a way to unlock their music in the future (maybe free equal downloads from Zune Marketplace so they have updated copies with license servers that will hopefully be around at least a little while). In the end though, it’s just another reverberation of the deathknell for DRM. Most major labels are signed on to sell their tunes without it; you can even buy non-DRM tracks from iTunes. There’s no real excuse for the public to subsidize crippled media markets by buying protected audio anymore.

[ AppScout :: Customer Service 101: Microsoft Deletes MSN Music Servers ]

[ BoingBoing :: MSN Music Customers Lose *All* Their Music the Next Time They Buy A New PC ]

Popular Mechanics has something to say about the Mac hardware platform and Windows Vista:

“You guys are made for each other, you should totally be BFF.”

Or something like that. The definitive guide to mechanics and technology has announced that in its benchmarking showdown the Intel-based Macintosh is likely better suited to run Windows Vista than most PCs being sold with the OS already installed. So for those Mac users who are all about dual booting MacOS and Windows Vista? You’re on to something there. Vista on the Mac performed better than several comparably priced and configured retail PCs doing everyday tasks like browsing the web, editing and opening documents, and playing music and movies.

While there were some differences, the Gateway desktop and Asus notebook were evenly matched with their Mac counterparts — an iMac and MacBook, respectively.

“In both the laptop and desktop showdowns, Apple’s computers were the winners,” the magazine said.

Surprisingly to the magazine, Apple’s user interface for its OS X Leopard didn’t outshine Vista among the testers, who liked the look and feel of both operating systems, but showed a slight preference toward OS X. The real differences were in the speed trials, where Leopard “trounced” Vista in important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown and program-launch times.

“We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple’s platform-switching Boot Camp software — and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did,” the magazine said. “Simply put, Vista proved to be a more sluggish operating system than Leopard.”

Another surprise was the price of the systems. While the Apple Mac is often seen as more expensive than the PC, Popular Mechanics found that the Asus M51sr cost the same as the MacBook, and the Gateway One cost $300 more than an iMac.

“That means for the price of the Gateway you could buy an iMac, boost its hard drive to match the Gateway’s, purchase a copy of Vista to boot — and still save $100,” the magazine said.

Ouch! That’s going to put a sock in a lot of Apple criticism. Most likely the “OMG MACS R EXPENSIV” argument, and the “WTF APPLE OS IZ TEH SLOW” argument. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people with their panties in a bunch over it though and running their own tests; which is only a good thing – more evidence can never be bad.

In the end though, the Mac v. PC battle will rage on in the seedy underbelly of Internet flamewars, but it’s nice to know that someone serious has done some real side-by-side testing, and the old arguments used against Apple just don’t stand up anymore. Now if you want to tackle Apple on the topic of closed architectures and such, now we have a real discussion topic.

[ Information Week: Macs Run Vista Better than PCs, Popular Mechanics Says So ]

Not every tech news site is made alike, as you can certainly tell just by looking around here. But at the same time, sometimes I want something a bit more inclusive and with a broader audience, focusing on news, reviews, tips, tricks, and more. Hey, even I have to have sources. Thankfully, Geek.com, a small but well put together tech news and info site, comes to the rescue.

A clean site design certainly doesn’t hurt, and Geek.com delivers on that at the very beginning. The topics of interest are clearly laid out, and diving into any one of them opens up a host of information written by fellow geeks who also stay up all night to fiddle with their computers, and wouldn’t dream of buying a boxed machine unless they were absolutely sure it was a good bargain for the power they need and the money they’d spend (otherwise, building it yourself is the only option!).

So whether you’re looking for some Apple news without the anti-Apple tint that a lot of tech news sites have taken to heart (suddenly it’s cool to hate Apple now that they’re doing well), or you’re looking for gaming news without every other comment being “OMZ LOLZ U NUB,” Geek.com might be a good place to go – after all, it may be made by and for geeks, but it certainly doesn’t exclude the non-geek from enjoying it.

[ Geek.com ]

What’s wrong with this picture? If you guessed that half of the keys on this keyboard have the paint worn off of them and several others have holes eaten through the plastic, you’d be right – but you’d be wrong in thinking this poor keyboard came out of a chemistry lab somewhere. In fact, the poor thing was used by a medical transcriptionist whose typing skills are apparently legendary. I’m generally pretty hard on my keyboards, but I’m nothing compared to this.

Check out the link at BoingBoing for more photos and the type of legendary keyboard that made this all possible.

[ Medical Transcriptionist Melts Keyboard with Fingertips ]