Bill Bumgarner

We received yet another AOL CD in the mail today. They are no longer shipping out the metal tins (which I actually kinda liked once they were empty of all the garbage).

Instead, AOL is now shipping out relatively nice DVD style cases that contains not one, but two pieces of media. The plastic is a little bit brittle -- you get what you pay for.

The first piece of media is the standard AOL installation CD. The second disc is a CDRW. That's right, a CDRW that likely cost an order of magnitude more than a CDR (4 cents instead of .4 in the quantity AOL ships).

Why a piece of blank media?

Because AOL also includes 5 free iTunes music store songs. That's pretty cool.

The litle card suggests that you download your free songs, then burn them to the CDRW.

That is almost a really good idea. Problem is, most consumer CD players purchased prior to the last couple of years cannot play CDRW discs. Many current models can't either.

Oops.