I'm a loyal customer. I've owned at least 5 Squeezeboxes over the years and currently (try to) use two SB3's in my home, and softsqueeze at the office. I've been an advocate and sold many friends on the products and concepts of Slimdevices. I still plan to go big and get a Transporter just as soon as there is software to match that incredible piece of equipment.
But I'm after a long, blissful, year of enjoying a well tuned Slimserver 6.5.something and ignoring updates, I made the mistake of trying 7.0. I'm going to vent. I'm sincerely not trying to offend, but maybe light a fire. Here's my list of what is dumb: -Software reliability: Please call a beta version (buggy, untested, unreliable, even though a few of us geeks can get it running) a beta version. Don't make it the default download until you have some indication that it is going to work for your customers. Helping troubleshoot my job and not a hobby I enjoy when I'm trying to listen to music. and I just want the latest version that will actually work. 6.5.x, right? 7.x is beta. Release candidate, tops. Your not under the same pressure as a software company to release, release, release. You're hardware is only as reliable as your software and sales will suffer. -Effects and animation: You know how we all make fun of flaming animated .GIF images on crappy amature webpages? Same thing. Just because it's neat doesn't mean you have to put it in. These features serve only to remind us that you've been using your resources to integrate spinning CD images instead of fixing bugs and improving performance. It's a browser interface, not a feature film. Present the information quickly and orderly. No one is impressed by a chunky, slow transparent overlay that doesn't present anything useful. Why do you think Vista (Window XP, Millenium Ed.) is tanking? -Settings: I was very happy to read that supposedly 7.X would keep my previous settings. Wrong. I can't even get it to run without a complete nuke of the previous install, which nukes my settings. Also, it's dumb that after all these years, I still have to set each player's settings individually each time I "upgrade" versions. Give us a persistant default player settings interface as well as individual player settings. And god, would someone re-org the settings? There must be 50 pages worth that are in nearly random order. -Slim Network requirement: Give me a break. I'm sure many people find the Slim Network a useful service, but there is no reason these devices can't operate without any communication beyond their local network if that's what the user wants. I don't want to give you an address, or password, or info about when my player is on or off, or anything. You got my money and that the only demographic info you need. -tray icon: Just what the world needs. One more tray icon that does nothing useful (unless you count "starting... starting... starting" indefinately until I uninstall/reinstall as useful). What is the fascination? Did the marketing department come up with it? Why does it take 13 megs of memory 24/7 to tell me nothing I don't already know? -Slim/Logitech: You guys/gals are acting dumb. How can the company that hatched such a brilliant product concept still be mired with such a crappy, unfriendly software implimentation? I'm a vetran technology pro and I find your stuff is a pain in the butt. How can I recommend it to technically moderate family and friends that need something to be intuitive and easy and works out of the box? Every home should have several of you devices, but your ship will sink first if you take another x years to publish a decent interface. -Me: I'm dumb for wasting my time writing this. Won't change anything. Probably get sensored. -Me again: I'm also dumb for "upgrading" to 7. Let me know when it's 7.5.x. I'll be back on 6.5ish. -- random_tox __________________________________ www.discogs.com/user/Random_Tox www.discogs.com/user/Random_Digits ------------------------------------------------------------------------ random_tox's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2096 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47952 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
