DRM Hurts Battery Life?

Engadget posts that CNet’s MP3 Insider studied several MP3 players and discovered that you lose several hours of battery life when playing DRM music.

The iPod loses eight percent of its battery when playing FairPlay AAC tracks, while PlaysForSure devices lose from 2-5 hours. The Creative Zen Vision: M dropped from 16 hours to 12 hours.

The theory (and probably the accurate reason) is that DRM music uses the processor of the player more, draining the battery faster. Of course, it is also possible that WMA/AAC files drain the battery more than MP3 files.

Either way, while this is something that companies should be working on, I think we can all agree that it is more important for them to concentrate on longer battery lives in general. After all, if your player gets 40 hours, but only 35 with DRM, that’s not terrible.

Still, its just another downside of DRM.

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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