“Dell and Napster said they will provide colleges with a legal online music hardware and software package. The offering combines Napster’s digital music service with Dell’s PowerEdge 1855 servers that will boost network bandwidth at schools. Colleges will be able to use the servers to store music from Napster’s library locally, allowing network processing speed to remain fast while hundreds of students simultaneously download music. Under the deal, Dell will sell Napster subscriptions to additional colleges and universities at a discounted academic rate and also offer special prices on bundles that include Dell’s digital music players,’ Wired News reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Any school that takes Dell and Napster up on this “offer” should also post signs around campus that read, “Mac-using and/or iPod-using students not welcome here.”
Napster does not work with Macintosh or iPod. And nobody except Michael Dell seems to want a clunky, ugly Dell DJ. Doing such a deal would be akin to a U.S. school replacing all of its library’s English books with Chinese versions.
School officials should offer their students a completely cross platform solution. Apple’s iTunes is the only music solution that all students on Macs or Windows PCs can use. Fact time: 80-90% or more of students own and use iPods, not Dell DJs. Do you even know anyone who owns a Dell DJ? And, surely, students would like easy access to thousands of podcasts, right?
Students who do not wish to be excluded from (and potentially still charged a fee for) their school’s legal music system should inform decision makers of Apple’s iTunes on Campus program.
According to Forbes, “The University of Washington is the first school to sign up and will market the service and Dell’s portable players to students. Napster will offer discounted rates on its subscriptions, as will Dell for PCs and players.” Full article here.
Send a comment to The University of Washington here.
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