The stars have clearly aligned for me with Slacker. Yesterday I spoke with Jonathan Sasse at the company for an update on Slacker happenings. During which conversation I discovered that Slacker is actually now available on my Squeezebox now. And finally, today my Slacker portable player arrived in the mail. Hooray!
I’ll save some of the details from my conversation with Jonathan for another post, except to say that Slacker will start shipping its hardware to retail chains in the next couple of weeks. No word yet on which stores or exact timing, but it sounds like we could see players on shelves by summer.
As for my own Slacker player, I’ll work on a full review for ZNF as soon as possible. I unboxed today and will start playing tonight.
In the meantime, I’m thoroughly enjoying Slacker on my Squeezebox. I signed in to my Slacker account on the SqueezeNetwork and my custom stations were instantly available on my living-room stereo. CNET’s John Falcone also commented on the ease of managing Internet radio accounts via the Squeezebox in his glowing review of the Squeezebox Duet. While he doesn’t go into detail on each of the radio services, I can attest to the fact that managing both Slacker and Pandora is remarkably straightforward.
One other note: My living-room stereo for the moment consists of a SurroundXi portable speaker system plugged into the Squeezebox. The SurroundXi is a review unit designed to work primarily with iPods, but I’m finding it quite suitable for my needs. It’s also the perfect size right now given that we’ve moved all of our furniture to prepare for the wood flooring we’re having installed tomorrow. I can carry my entire stereo system (Squeezebox plus SurroundXi) in one trip up to the bedroom when the contractors arrive.