>From my perspective, the strengths of the Squeezebox (I own two and use Softsqueeze as a third station) are:
1. Very high sound quality. 2. Superb remote interface. 3. Easy synchronization between players. 4. Unobtrusive and silent. 5. The open source, free server software. 6. Softsqueeze. Both a useful player and a great sales tool. Weaknesses: 1. Difficult setup for non-geeks; I can't even -imagine- turning my mother loose with a Squeezebox without help. 2. Frequently unstable software. I appreciate that the dev team works so hard, but they just don't have the resources they need for proper testing. (and aren't long on the charisma necessary to recruit new testers... at one point, I was kind of trying to volunteer as a tester, and got chased off.) 3. The website says 'use the the stable build, the nightlies are dangerous', when in actual fact, that's exactly backwards. The devs think that 'stable' means 'code that isn't changing' -- whether or not it actually works. They left up a completely broken release for about two weeks. When I complained, I was told it was 'stable' code, and thus shouldn't be changed. It didn't work -- it couldn't work -- but it was 'stable', so they didn't fix it for ages. Anyone downloading the software in that window (I think this was the first release of 6.3.0) simply would not have a working server. From my perspective, that's a customer relations disaster. If it's broken and you can't fix it immediately, pull it and put the old one up. Most folks think of 'stable' code as an implied promise that the program will work. Knowingly putting them through pain and frustration is extremely bad customer service. Overall, in my experience, the nightly builds of the stable branch are far more likely to run well than the official point releases. Solicit other opinions, but I believe the website should reflect that. 4. Perl. The existing server is written in Perl, and it's slow. It's fine on a big machine -- I run it on a dual core Linux server, and it's very quick -- but it's sluggish on small boxes. That means you can't easily put out an NSLU3 with the server built right in. (The NSLU2 does run SlimServer, but it's very slow. 6.5 may be better, but 6.2.X was glacial.) That said, however, there is a huge pile of work in that code, and it's not something that should lightly be abandoned. The CUE/FLAC logic was particularly hard to work out, judging from the number of odd little buglets I've seen over the years. I don't know what the solution is there...a rewrite in something faster may be the only solution, but I think that would be a path involving much pain. Whatever the choice is, make SURE that it's still open source or it won't be widely accepted. Things that sell Squeezeboxes: 1. High quality sound 2. The try-before-you-buy combo of Slimserver and Softsqueeze. The system is complex, but because it's all a free download with a solid emulator, people can find out if they like it or not before they spend a cent. Strong sales tool. 3. The great display 4. Slim's excellent customer support. Overall impressions: The Squeezebox hardware is incredibly good in the price range. In all honesty, I think it's the awesome hardware that sells the Squeezebox more than any other single factor. It's really, really good. (As an aside, I'd like to see a new form factor that fits into an audio stack better. The Transporter is very good there, but a mite expensive.) The software's acceptable, but it's not in the same league as the hardware. It needs interface work and more testing for sure. A total rewrite in a faster language might also be a good idea. And more focus on the customer experience would be good. Leaving broken software up for download isn't the best idea I've seen. I'd also like to see the ability to do ANYTHING with the web control that you can do with the remote. Having to dig out the remote for the 'sleep' and firmware update functions is kind of a pain. The suggestions for a turnkey solution have been very good. If you could get the software running fast enough, a modified NSLU2 with a USB CD and hard drive might fit very well... small, silent, and inexpensive. Alternately, good front-end software on the PC would also be fine, and you could save on the CD drive. I think the box is already running Rendezvous, so it should be trivial for software on a PC to find it. It should easily be able to rip, compress, tag, and load music onto the server. This should literally be a one-click process... put CD in, click Rip. Everything else is just handled. (and handled WELL. That's really important. ) The existing hardware is a great foundation. You can go in a lot of directions from here. You've already got the geek crowd. Now's the time to polish it up and go after their friends and relatives. :) -- Malor ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Malor's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1961 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=31324 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
