Does DRM Really Suck the Life of Batteries? — CNet Test Flawed

Leander Kahney ()

An experiment by CNet to see whether copy-protected music files sucked the life out of player’s batteries is interesting but flawed.

According to CNet, DRM copy-protected music can decrease battery life by up to 25 percent thanks to the processing overhead necessary to play them.

But as one commentator on the story points out, the test compared protected WMA files with unprotected MP3 files. It should have compared protected-WMA to unprotected WMA, or Apple’s FairPlay AAC versus unprotected AAC.

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About the author

Leander Kahney

is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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Posted in iPod |

  • jeremy

    good eye, i didn’t even think of that the first time i read it. have they sent you any response to this.

  • Captain N

    Not only should they be testing the same core file format, but they should (in theory) be testing the same music encoded at the same bitrate.