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Buying Music from Other than iTunes?
flyingember asks: "I own an iPod and use iTunes music store. It's easy and it works. My mom likes her tiny Philips Rush player, as she prefers small for her devices. Now, she wants more music, and is willing to pay for it. She runs Windows 98SE, because she likes it and work hasn't upgraded to XP, yet. Does this sound like anyone you know? Is there a service that supports Windows98, a ton of players, and has good variety? I'm willing to put up with WMA's, if compatability is there. Napster is 2000/XP only; Musicmatch does not support her player for downloads; Buymusic seems to be the same; and Emusic doesn't have the right music. Is there a legal download service for people that don't have an iPod that just works?"
for god's sake, forcibly upgrade her to winXP. it's just like 98, but doesn't crash so often and it only takes about 2 hours of your time.
Slighty Off Topic, but here are some more links to iPod Jr. stories. It's interesting to note that about 1/3 of the stories here don't even mention that this is speculation, and that none of this has been confirmed.
Michael C. Hollinger
I have nothing against using older computers, and I am certainly not a "newness bigot" (at least, I hope I am not). In the original post, part of the problem that flyingember's mother had was that because she was running Windows 98, she was unable to run Napster. Based on flyingember's analysis of the other online music stores (which are based on quality, not inaccessibility like iTunes and Napster), it is perfectly reasonable to assume that she would use otherwise. If you cannot run the applications you want because of operating system limitations, I would argue that you do not have the "tool that does the job."
Secondly, take a look at the reasons why she did not want to upgrade to Windows 2000 or XP:
She runs Windows 98SE, because she likes it and work hasn't upgraded to XP, yet.
Hardware limitations do not seem to come into play. Windows 2000 has pretty reasonable system requirements, even for older machines. Also, I think it would be fair to assume that "work" will decide to upgrade before Longhorn comes out in 2006; learning how to use a more modern operating system beforehand would be perfectly "sane and rational."