>I installed Vista RC1 last night, you can find the ISO here. You’ll need to be a customer preview program member because it needs a serial #, but if you got Beta 2 when that was released you should be all set. RC1 installed much more smoothly, and has all the features, but is still missing some polish. It was a great preview and it’s usable until 5/31/2007 (I’m assuming release date for Vista?)

Along with Vista came URGE, which after hearing the following advertised on Howard this morning, is apparently a new trend in media services – the internet: Akimbo – download service via Media Player or set top box

Last night was spent downloading oodles and oodles of music, for free. I’ve got a 2 week free trial to MTV URGE – a music service integrated with Windows Media Player 11 and Vista. [insert buzz here]

Here’s how it works:
You pay for a subscription, and you can download whatever you want for free (like Napster) – unless it’s a popular song (not sure if Napster does that).
For example: Nicole tried to download Rihanna – SOS but it was .99 just to download! It appears the main singles are sometimes .99, though not always. There were songs I’d consider very popular that just came out that were a free download. Even if there are some pay songs, most adjacent songs on the album are normally free to download.

The only reasoning I could find was that certain songs are popular, and in that case you have to pay extra. I don’t agree with that philosophy, but maybe record contracts are to blame. I say either make them all free, or pay, but cherry picking the popular artists leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Even the free downloads will prompt you to pay for them if you want to burn them. You are allowed to move them to data CD/DVD or your music player but not burn them to an audio CD.

So for the next 2 weeks I’m going to enjoy all the obscure NIN, Johnny Cash, Hybrid, and other choice tracks I ravaciously downloaded, and record record record.