In the past, I didn’t think that DRM would “work” with users. I figured most people wouldn’t stand for having their content digitally managed. That, and I also thought it would be such a pain in the butt to transfer music around to different devices. However, I am beginning to think that I was wrong. Here’s part of the reason why.

Yesterday I signed up for a year’s worth of Yahoo! Unlimited (aka, yTunes). For $60/year you get all the music you can stand. Although a few artists are MIA (like Led Zepplin and old Black Sabbath), the yTunes music library is pretty sweet. I’ve already downloaded Greenday’s American Idiot and Ben Lee’s newest Awake Is the New Sleep. They both sound great… none of the weird sound levels, incomplete recordings, ID3 tags in a mess — all the stuff you get when you steal music. That alone is worth $60.

However, the really cool thing about yTunes — and more generally Microsoft’s DRM system — is how easy it is to sync yTunes with a portable device. Fortunately, I own two devices that Play for Sure: my Dell Axim x50v PDA and my Audiovox SMT5600 smartphone. Lucky me!

Syncing to the Dell couldn’t be easier. Before you plug the Dell into its sync cradle, the yTunes client looks like this:

Note that I’ve got my Smartphone syncing in this view

After plugging the Dell into its cradle, the yTunes client automagically recognizes the PDA.

Both the PDA and the CF card that is plugged into the PDA show up in yTunes — kewl!

I figured that syncing my entire library of music would be impractical, since I currently only have an old 256 MB CF card in my PDA (yeah, I’ve got to upgrade that). Syncing a playlist would be much more practical, so I created one called To CF Card. Then I selected the My Playlists view in the yTunes client. Here’s what showed up.

To sync the To CF Card playlist with my PDA’s CF card, all I had to do was click on the Transfer to Device button. This is the selection box that shows up.

A few seconds later the syncing is done. Firing up the Dell’s Windows Media Player (yeah, I gotta download a better player), I’m ready to rock to some Kid Rock.

I didn’t say I had any taste in music!

Far out! Yet another reason to pick up a Dell Axim. Just tell Michael I sent you.