They should use Napster, dammit!!!!! Oh, wait - sorry. I was having a RealityCheck moment there.

Napster offers a much better deal to students. Trying to get poor college kids hooked on paying for each song is wrong, gives new meaning to iPodPushers. You know the parents will get stuck with the iTunes bill. At least Jobs might get a new jet.
Check the facts:
http://live.psu.edu/story/11216

What wonderful tunnel vision you have, RC. Did you ever consider that, for this specific application, it may not be a good thing to make it easy for students to load up on all the music they'd want?

If you took a moment to read past TMO coverage, you'd see that many are concerned that the kids are using their iPods to listen to music, rather than lectures, which is the point of the program.

Watch as the Penn State student flunk out since they spent their time listening to music instead of lectures. But at least they'll be able to recite the lyrics of the Top 20 Countdown, when they aren't asking the next customer if they'd like fries with that.

This always astounds me: two news releases from two media outlets on the same day report the same factual news... and represent it as meaning two completely different things.

Forbes.com had this to say: (an AP news story)

Duke Decides Against Another IPod Giveaway

"An iPod in every new student's hand? Not this year at Duke. The private university in Durham has decided not reprise last year's experimental mass handout to all incoming freshman of the pricey hard-disk portable digital players.

Only students enrolled in certain classes will get the free gadgets."


It's a success! No, it's a failure! No, it's... what the hell is it, anyway?

Soo tired of having to sift through the BS.

One side effect of the program here is that many more people than just freshmen appear to have purchased them. (They are available in the bookstore but they are often sold out.) While iPods were popular on campus prior to the initiative, casual observation suggests that a larger fraction of the entire university now owns them. Grad students and even the faculty can be commonly seen sporting them. I am not sure how well this translates into Mac sales, but PowerBooks seem to be sprouting everywhere as well.

… can be gained by reading the Provost's memo, which sounds quite positive in view of just the Fall semester's result reports. I didn't read the Forbes's article (linked to it in new tab, then closed the page … ), but it sounds like the author drew hasty conclusions …
Obviously, the iPod is still limited in what it can do, so it's not a cure-all, and it's now time to add other tools to the panoply. Had the iPod experiment been a failure, the position might be to NOT have any iPods and either use other tools, or drop the whole idea of experimenting with new technology, period.

What does a Napster look like? What kind of belt hanger do they come with?

According to news reports

Duke University to continue iPod program
http://playlistmag.com/news/2005/04/06/duke/index.php

Duke abandons iPod giveaway program
http://www.theindychannel.com/education/4355075/detail.html

As someone mentioned above it's interesting how the same story can get two wholly different spins.

"Another good question the Penn State students raise is why their school did not pick Apple's iTunes Music Store as the service of choice. It runs on both Macs and Windows-based PCs."

"I'd rather be able to download and burn CDs," Jacquelyn Virgi, a junior told the Penn State paper.

"For the time being, it looks like a large chunk of the Penn State student body is stuck paying for a service they don't really want, in part, because the heads of their school happen to be very, very close friends with a lobby group."

http://www.theregister.com/2003/11/10/penn_states_pigopolist_pork/

Students can download - or stream - all the songs they like for free but can only use or play the tunes while at Penn State. After their four tuition-paying years are up, their tethered downloads disappear.

Student can opt to pay 99 cents to burn the songs on a CD, but even then there is another catch. Napster is a Windows-only service, so all the Mac fans out there receive squat for their $160 contribution to the IT fund.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/07/penn_state_students_revolt_against/

So PSU decided to go with Napster. Well, we can't win them all, but many others are standardizing with the iPod.
Check the facts:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=677&e=3&u=/usatoday/20050407/bs_usatoday/dukesfreeipodswillgojustforclasses

"Other schools have followed in Duke's closely watched footsteps...Drexel University...Georgia College and State University...and Stillman College..."