I've been doing client / server computing practically since it was invented. (Anybody remember MIT's Project Athena?) One of the design principles that I keep seeing people failing to learn year after year, generation after generation is this:
The end nodes ALWAYS get smarter. Make sure your architecture takes advantage of that! Being a computer geek, I decided that instead of simply buying the gold-plated Sonos system that did exactly what I wanted, I would experiment with the lower cost Slim Devices and Roku solutions to home audio. I've been running the cheapest boxes from Roku (the M500 SoundBridge) and Slim Devices (the SB3) side by side for a while. Both solutions lack a crucial feature: multi-device synchronized playback. I'd hoped to participate in development of this feature, but other obligations have kept me away from contributing. So I've been a plain user for a while -- watching both systems when they work, and when they don't work. When they work, BOTH systems are quite nice. Slim Devices, by putting more reliance on the server, and making that open source makes it easier to get new features going, and perhaps to fix problems. When they don't work, the Roku becomes a brick that you can't debug. The Slim Devices is this thing you can take apart and fiddle with, and maybe get working. But why do I find myself prefering the Roku to the Slim Devices system? Because the Slim Devices system, for all its openness and featurefulness, is FRAGILE! It breaks down MUCH more often than my Roku. What is my experience just as a user? I go downstairs, and exercise to internet radio played directly off my Roku. Then I come upstairs and then begin the process of trying to figure out why my Squeezebox won't play today! By having the ABILITY to put some brains in the device, and some brains in a server, Slim Devices has a more powerful architecture. By opening up the development, it has the ability to leverage much more talent out in the world. But by putting ALL the brains in the server so that even the most basic things like connecting to someone ELSE's stream, require perfect operation of the device, the server, and a lot of additional festoons in the architecture, Slim Devices has a total solution that is screwed by, not enhanced by, the tradeoff it makes. If there is ONE thing I would change about the Squeezebox it would be: Get someone to write some REALLY TIGHT, REALLY ROBUST, stand-alone code for the device firmware that enables it to act on its own without a server. Essentially provide the same stand-alone baseline that Roku does. -William Cattey Senior Analyst Programmer Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- wcattey ------------------------------------------------------------------------ wcattey's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7506 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33695 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
