Finally, another writer who agrees with my dubious assessment of Napster To Go. Rob Pegoraro has a column in the Wahington Post in which he reviews NTG with two portable players: the Creative Zen Touch and an iRiver device. Only minor transfer troubles there. It's the ongoing, mounting price for music rental that bothers Rob. He adds up how much he has spent on CDs in the past 20 years, then adds up how much the expense would be using napster To Go instead. The two numbers are frighteningly close, and Rob points out that with Napster's service he wouldn't own a single song.

That's half of my complaint. The other half is with raising the basic napster subscription price (10 dollars) for the "added value" of portability. Portability has never been an added value in music consumerism before, and it shouldn't be now. Let the DRM technology behind Napster To Go, and the business model itself, fail or succeedd in the open market, but don't tell us that taking music out of the house makes that music 50 percent more valuable.