Dooba.net

These days many of us are getting a lot of music content via streaming. Pandora and the like are great for almost all situations. However, I also subscribe to Rhapsody for a couple of reasons:

- Sometimes I really want to listen to a specific song. Maybe I heard it on a commercial or from a movie or something. Or just in the mood for music from one particular artist. Pandora doesn’t give you this level of control. You could buy the song from iTunes or Amazon. But half the time I have songs I really like for a short period of time, and then sort of move on.

- There are still cases where you can’t stream. Even with near ubiquitous 3G, and lots of WiFi hot spots. On a plane for example, or at some ski areas here, there is no cell service. Or camping, backpacking, etc. Also, I don’t mind my iPod getting a bit beat up if im biking, or whatever. Or running down the batt with music. I’m much more careful of my phone, so that limits my use as my iPod only has WiFi.

So I have rhapsody as it solves both problems, sort of. I can listen to whatever I want on my computer or ipod or ipad, streaming. Or I can fill certain devices with offline downloads. So I have a little cheap MP3 player for that situation. Not the best solution.

Enter the new Rhapsody mobile apps. You can DOWNLOAD to your device now, over the air. No plug in syncing. Just select whatever paylist(s) you want and hit download. Boom, offline listening! This is so great. I can load up my iPad with whatever music I feel like that day and can listen on a flight or wherever without having to find WiFi.

The apps are free, and you just need a $10 a month subscription (for 1 device) or $15 a month (for 3 devices). Doing the math, if I bought 15 $1 songs each month, I would need about 40 months to buy just what I have on my iPad right now. Thats almost 4 years. I think its  pretty good deal.

The only bummer is the Android app doesn’t support this yet, just the iDevice apps.

When Apple first announced the iPas I was solidly in the “meh, this isn’t great” camp. Lets be honest, the launch show with Steve-O wasn’t *that* great, and there were too many uses of “magical” for my taste. Plus, at that time it seemed like an iPod Touch they put on a taffy puller. Why do I need that?

However, the last few weeks I have been trying to solve a technology problem and an coming to realize the iPad just might fit the bill. I switched companies a couple weeks ago and the IT setup is very different. My old company had an external WiFi network that was outside the corporate LAN, and streaming, video watching, etc, was fine. So, I took my laptop to my office and had access to Pandora, Rhapsody, Hulu, etc. My new company’s IT policy is much more strict and prohibits streaming via the company network and there is no public WiFi.

Like most people I need to be entertained while I write code, so I have been trying to come up with a better solution. Aside from streaming music, I listen to podcasts. So I have been using Pandora/Rhapsody on my Android and then have my iPod for podcasts and other media that I own. But this isn’t all that great… I dont like running music on my phone all day as it seriously hurts the battery, and I’m still using 2 devices.

Side note on why 2 devices – lets face it, iTunes is still king of media programs. The podcasting setup is great… and movie purchase/rental is nice as well. The Zune desktop app comes close, but Zune isn’t an option for my current situation as there is no 3G (yet). And Android podcasting is pretty basic.. with no good desktop app for syncing.

So, I went the netbook route and looked at 3G cards. ATT and VZ offer a 5GB/mo plan for $60, with hefty fees if you go over. Cricket offers a no contract “unlimited” plan for $40 a month. Unlimited in that you can go over 5GB, but they will throttle your bandwidth.

With a 2 year contract I can get a netbook from either ATT or VZ for $50-$200 depending on specs. This works out to be (60*24)+200 = $1640 for the two years. Cricket would be less per month, but you have to buy a netbook at full price, so its about a wash.

The problem is, 5GB wont last long spread over a month with lots of music and some vid use. Plus, the majority of netbooks I tried were just blah. Screens weren’t that nice, etc. There is a Sony with a high res screen that is very nice, but it is about $550 and isn’t carried by ATT or VZ. So that puts you at close to $2000 for a two year contract. Thats a lot just to play pandora…

Enter the iPad. I have all my music and podcasts on one device. I can rent movies, I can play silly games.. and use not so silly apps. The battery should be pretty good… and the web surfing experience will be way better than any phone… and I would bet better than the netbooks (except for the lack of Flash). Add to this the $30 a month true unlimited ATT data plan with *NO* contract! You literally can sign up and cancel service at any time from the iPad itself. No need to go to an ATT store even. This is really.

So, the base 3G model with two years of data comes to (30*24) + 630 = 1350. So not only are we cheaper than a normal netbook (and much cheaper than a good netbook) setup, we aren’t limited to 5GB. Plus, I can turn off the data any month that I dont need it, or want to save some cash.

The bottom line is, while I still think some things about iPad are stupid (no flash, no multitasking), it really does solve my current problem quite well and for less money.