Well it’s here (almost). Although promised by the end of the summer, the Slacker Portable is now available for pre-order and should ship in mid-December.
You shouldn’t think of it as an MP3 player, per se, although you can load MP3 and WMA files onto the device. Think of it more as a personal portable radio. You listen to songs and rate them. The ones you hate never show up again and the ones you love show up more often. Music is transferred to the player over a Wi-Fi connection and artist/song biographical information is displayed on the 4-inch color screen (it’s not a touchscreen, though).
I had high, high hopes for this device. I suppose part of me is still hanging on to the possibility that it might still be all it’s cracked up to be. My main concern is the price, however.
The cheapest player is $200 and that’s for 2GB of storage. The 4GB and 8GB versions are $250 and $300, respectively. Plus to be able to skip more than six songs per hour, keep advertisements off of the device, and save songs to be played whenever you want (only on Slacker’s software or portable player, though), you’ll have to pony up another $7.50 per month for the premium service. Battery life is rated at around 10 hours and the thing only plays music.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the idea of being lazy and telling the player, "Hey, I like AC/DC. Gimme a bunch of stuff that sounds like that," and then sifting through the good and the bad and finding new artists. I use the Slacker desktop software a lot and it works really well. It just seems weird to spend at least $200 plus $90 per year to be able to walk around with a hardware device that does the same thing.
I’m just really hung up on the price for some reason. I guess I wish the cost of the player was either subsidized or came with a year of free service, that’s all.
Slacker Portable Player (Finally) on the Way [PC Magazine]
What happened to the 120 gig model that was supposed to come out?
It isn’t “$200 plus $90 per year … (for) the same thing”, it’s $200 “to be able to walk around with a hardware device that does the same thing”. The $90/yr is for their new infinite-skip/save-a-song service.
Yes, thank you. That’s worded incorrectly. It seems weird to spend at least $200 to be able to walk around with a hardware device that does the same thing and then another $90 per year to be able to save songs to it and skip over songs I don’t like.
And if you are in an area w/o ‘open’ (aka; hijackable) Wifi, you seem to be out of luck. I thought that this device was going to have an FM subcarrier receiver for data reception (ala vcast) as well as a satellite receiver (for the same purpose).
You CAN develop your own single-artist playlists; just sit at the web/desktop player all day an continually ban artists/songs. Eventually (weeks), you will get a decent playlist for a particular artist.
Killer options that may or may not be included:
Like a song? Click on the screen and purchase the album from an online reseller.
View average ban/love stats, just to see how ‘cool’ your own music
selection is…
At first I was real excited about this player, then it got delayed. I still waited, and now that it is shipping I don’t want it anymore, I got a different player for christmas…
d_may