Slim Devices Squeezebox 2 Wireless - Network audio player - black
Amazing product, difficult setup for non-technical users
I am one of those people that has every gadget known to man, was the one the instructors went to for help during computer classes, and works in the tech field. <br /> <br />When I purchased the Squeezebox2 it was one of the best purchases I have ever made.  It does everything I need it to in terms of hosting my music on my server and playing it various rooms of my house.  It even synchronizes the music between those rooms (most of the time).  There is a loss of synchronization from time to time, but in my home application it's hardly ever noticable. <br /> <br />It has a wireless card in it that receives control information from a server upstairs running some perl software called slimserver.  slimserver can be controlled via various methods, including a command line, a web interface, and via the infrared remote pointed at the squeezebox2 itself sending commands to the server.  In my application I even have an 802.11b enabled PDA controlling them via the web browser.  Meaning I can sit on the patio and control each room of my home's music without being anywhere near them. <br /> <br />If you don't want to listen to your own music and want to listen to Internet radio you have the choice of shutting down your PC and pointing the squeezebox2 at an Internet based slimserver controlled by Slim Devices.  You can then listen to any WMV or MP3 Internet stream there is.  Pretty amazing. <br /> <br />The display on this device is EXTREMELY readable.  It was by far the highest selling point that I saw.  I sit about 10 feet away, and view it in the middle font size without a problem.  If I needed to be further away or was going blind I could even make it bigger. <br /> <br />Now the issues.  It's perl, so it can be slow if you have a big music collection.  I run the server software in FreeBSD, but I am told Windows users have issues with it being slower.  Now, when I say slow, I only mean slow in huge operations like reading your entire music collection.  It only needs to do that at startup and you can set it to do it every night at 3am if you want, so this issue isn't huge.  The other issues involve the synchronization issue I mentioned above, and finally some instability and bugs in the software.  The bugs and instability are fixed generally within a few days of reporting them, and are offset by the constant addition of new features by Slim Devices.  All of these issues are what I would call minor annoyances. <br /> <br />The biggest issue to me is setting it up.  Like I said, I'm a geek.  Well, I gave one of these to my father who is technically oriented, but not as much as I am.  I found myself while explaining things to him, realizing that if he knew less than he did this could be pretty difficult to explain.  So if you buy this, be sure you have someone with tech ability around somewhere to help out! <br /> <br />All in all, I am constantly looking for more situations to buy more of these devices, so I obviously am very happy with them.