Ugh! I just found out that my Audiovox SMT5600 (that I did a mini review on “here”:http://www.zoinger.com/archives/2005/03/15/10.05.52/ does not mount as a normal drive). You know, something that any “USB drive”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/102-0285871-3760161 does these days. Instead it appears as a special @Mobile Device@ thingy mounted to @My Computer@ in the Windows Explorer. WTF?

Now I can’t use my cool photo-downloading application (”Downloader Pro”:http://www.breezesys.com/Downloader/ from Breeze Systems). It can’t “see” that special @Mobile Device@ thingy.

You know what I think? I think this smells like some sort of DRM(Digital Restrictions Management) fiasco. Smells like someone is trying to protect some lame-ass ringtone downloads from being copied or some such thing. Either that or Microsoft’s Smartphone Product Marketing Managers don’t know what they are doing.

I can help if it’s the latter.

* The Smartphone when connected to the user’s PC shall mount as a drive accessible to applications such as, by way of example, a photo downloading application.

Cut-and-paste that into the damn product marketing requirements document. Either that or stop screwing us with DRM.