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Well, I finally waded through all the posts in this thread. I see a lot of people tossing off comments about how "you can just build a cheap [NAS/PC/whatever]" and I think they're missing the primary point the OP makes: -building- a box is something for computer hobbyists/enthusiasts who want to get into the nitty-gritty, which is the opposite of what the OP is asking for. It's like telling someone who wants a specific type of car, "Well, just build one." Building (or modifying) a car might be lots of fun for gearheads, but it's not really an option for the typical consumer. As for the original question of why there isn't a simple, absolutely-no-specialized-knowledge-required solution to the music library storage-and-streaming-service concept, I think the answer is primarily just this: time. Not nearly enough time has passed for the industry to have matured. We're talking about an infant industry, and an infant market here. Slim Devices (and the various competing products of similar concept) has been marketing these things for a scant five years. In-home consumer WiFi is barely ten years old. They're still in their infancy, and have a long way to go before they grow up into mature, fully-developed consumer products. Consider automobiles. Around 1910 or so, cars were available, and were marketed "for the average Joe" but think about what that meant. To use a car, the early car owner typically had to go through a set of procedures: block the wheels (because brakes and transmissions were iffy, and cars had a tendency to creep, and could be dangerous while you were cranking them), retard the spark (using a lever on the steering column or dash), adjust the throttle (another hand-set lever inside the car), set the choke (which might be inside the car, or might be out at the front near the crank), put in the crank, crank the engine (which took a certain amount of strength and effort, even if the car was in good shape and the engine caught easily -- many didn't), be careful not to lose a thumb or break a wrist if the engine kicked back (e.g. if you forgot to retard the spark, or didn't retard it enough), then quickly adjust the choke, rush back around to the driver's side, advance the spark, and adjust the throttle to make it idle properly. Then, once you got it running, driving it was a somewhat complicated affair as well, with three foot pedals, a hand throttle, and a hand lever for forward/reverse. It was also a good idea to know something about how the car operated, so you could make repairs en route. Roads were poor, top speed very low (by today's standards), tires didn't last long, gas stations could be hard to find. . . . Owning and using an early car was not a simple thing. Today's wireless streaming music/media technology is about where automobiles were a hundred years ago. Given time, they'll improve, become more reliable, smoother, easier to set up and use. And gradually, the general public will become more adept at setting them up and using them, just as people gradually got used to driving and caring for automobiles. However, I believe there will always be some level of complexity involved, because people want flexibility, and flexibility is the enemy of simplicity. This is the same reason home computers are complex: they're intended to be able to do a lot of things, and be highly customizable for different people to use them in different ways for different purposes. Home computers have been around (as fairly common, fairly cheap, pop-consumer products) for around twenty years, and there are still an awful lot of "average Joes" out there who fight, curse and struggle with them every day. As in "This stupid #%&@*! thing! What's the matter with the #%&@*! and why doesn't it just WORK the way I WANT IT TO?!" I think the Slim folks have done a pretty good job, all things considered. No, I can't picture my octogenarian parents setting up a Squeeze/Slim system from scratch, all by themselves. Or a lot of my non-computer-geek friends (the "average Joes"), for that matter. But it isn't really all -that- difficult, either. And the whole process will, over time, get smoother, and easier, and more average-Joe friendly. We have to let the infant industry start to grow up a bit. It will just take time. -- Dogberry2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dogberry2's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=18883 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=43198 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
