Here’s a good reason why Digital Rights Management (DRM) sucks. In CNET’s recent tests, it has shown that DRM can cause up to 25% loss of battery life. When playing only non-DRM MP3s on the Creative Zen Vision:M, the result was an impressive 16-hours of playback. However, when playing DRM’ed WMA exclusively, the playback time drops to a mere 12-hours. A loss of 4-hours of battery life!
And this is definitely not affecting only the PlaysForSure on the Creative player. Tests on Apple’s iPod with its FairPlay DRM has shown underperformances as well, by 8%.
In the long run, what this results in is a much shorter lifespan of your player’s battery.
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