I think there are basically two types of people: Category 1: People that already have a 24/7 running server in their home or easily can setup one. - Often "geeks" or techincally savvy people - I suspect most of the current SB owners are in this category
Category 2: People that don't have a 24/7 running server in their home. - Non techincally savvy people - Mass market - I suspect most of the future SB owners will be in this category Category 1 can see all the advantages with a slim device, for category 2 it doesn't matter as much. For category 2 a slim device really just adds complexity since you need 2 boxes to control. IMO Logitech needs to make the category 2 people happy since this is where the market growth is. Now, the main issues with making the SB a fat device as I see it is: 1. It would require huge development costs, we are basically talking about rewriting SlimServer for other hardware in another language. Years of development has been invested in the current SlimServer software, besides the gained experience all this invested time would be lost. During the time the development of the new fat device the competitors already in this area would just add more functionality to their product. When Logitech were finished with the fat device I expect the competition to have even greater products. The current advantage Logitech has over their competitors would be lost. 2. A fat device would not be compatible with the current SB/Transporter models regarding player synchronization. The result is that the current customers would need to by completely new equipment. 3. All the time invested in plugin development for the current SlimServer would also be lost since all the plugins would have to be rewritten. I'm not even sure Logitech would allow custom plugins on a fat device. 4. The open source community around SlimServer would probably die. If you look at most open source development today, it is almost always related to something that can run on several software or hardware platforms. Many open source developers are interested because they can make their own custom solution with the hardware they currently own. Making a fat device and hoping that the open source community would help developing software that only would work on Logitech hardware is in my opinion hoping for a bit too much. So, Logitech would probably have to do all the work themselves. === Now, saying all this, there is a solution to this problem which I also mentioned in my previous post. - Leave the SB as a thin device - Sell a hardware solution with pre-installed, pre-configured SlimServer. This way the users in catetory 1 can just buy the SB and use their already existing 24/7 server for SlimServer. The users in category 2 could buy the complete package with both SB and SlimServer hardware. The SlimServer hardware solution can be nicely designed so it can be docked with the SB, making it look like a single unit for those users that want this. I'm sure there are hardware companies available that would like to join efforts with Logitech, so a third party company could make the SlimServer hardware and Logitech could focus on the SB hardware and SlimServer software. This way this solution wouldn't require huge development cost for Logitech. I don't think we are talking about a NAS box for the SlimServer hardware, instead I'm think about something VIA EPIA, Mac Mini or something similar. Basically a slower computer that is small, silent and less power hungry than a normal computer. -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.homeip.net) 'My download page' (http://erland.homeip.net/download) (Developer of 'TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library and RandomPlayList plugins' (http://wiki.erland.homeip.net/index.php/Category:SlimServer)) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=37279 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
