Logitech Buys Slim Devices

Logitech today announced the purchase of Slim Devices, longtime makers of network audio players SliMP3, Squeezebox, and the new Transporter. A couple years back Logitech bought Harmony Remote, becoming the makers of all my wireless control devices for my entertainment center (Bluetooth mouse, remote control, and PS2 controllers). Now they make my Squeezebox, too.

Re:Not so sure ...

[asdhwesd]

I agree... Slim Devices has done a good job of communicating and working with its customers over the years to make things work better and in adding new features.

This is a sad day for Squeezebox owners and fans of Slim Devices.

As said by someone elsewhere in this thread, I just hate it when big companys buy little companies out.

http://www.slimdevices.com/ [slimdevices.com]

crazy

[bunions]

the kings of bloated drivers (30MB to install my keyboard?!?) meet the kings of super-awesome software. WHO WILL WIN?!

My money is on logitech. Glad I bought a squeezebox a few months ago (they are 10lbs of awesome stuffed into a 5lb sack).

Re:Was it these guys that...

[Holmwood]

Version 3 of of Slim Devices Squeezebox is quite polished. I agree, V2 looked a bit clunky.

Moreover, the informal tech support on their boards is amazingly good, IMHO. I posted about a problem in the evening one holiday weekend, and their CTO posted back with a suggested solution later that night. Now a fan of their products, sure, but the CTO? Great.

In the short term, this is great news for the employees (assuming they have options/stock in the company) and founders. Shareholders can cash out and get a return on the equity (sweat and cash) they've put into the business. I'm very happy for them.

In the longer term? They'll probably lose some good people, and I doubt that in five years time senior company officers will be answering a new users questions late at night on the boards on a holiday.

Also, unless I'm really missing something, I don't see where a product like the Transporter (http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_transporter.html [slimdevices.com]) fits in. I mean circa $2000? For something from Logitech!?

Thinking about it that way, for me, this is a little like a decent, but unexceptional fast-food chain purchasing the local bistro.

So it's kind of mixed news for consumers, I think. More backing, deeper pockets is good, but I do worry about what will happen to their customer service. I also worry about a junky cost-reduced product killing them.

-Holmwood

Sigh

[DaveJay]

I love my Squeezebox. I have a box full of Logitech peripherals that I no longer use. I can only hope that they let the Slim Devices folks keep doing what they do best, but with the marketing muscle and distribution that Logitech can leverage (I hate seeing Roku players on the shelves at Fry's, but no Squeezeboxen.)

SlimServer is still GPL

[tomRakewell]

One of the best things about the Squeezebox is the open source SlimServer app that powers it. Written in Perl, it runs on any operating system. How can Logitech take that away? It's even conceivable that, if Logitech destroys the Squeezebox, somebody else can create a hardware box that will run on Slimserver.

I think re-engineering Slimerserver would be difficult, expensive and stupid. Logitech will keep it. That's the core of the Linux Squeezebox compatibility right there.

So long Slim Devices...

[10Ghz]

When I read this piece of news, I was immediately reminded of the purchase of Empeg [wikipedia.org] my SONICblue. Empeg was a kick-ass piece of equipment, and SONICblue promptly ran it to the ground. I have a bad feeling that same thing will happen here. The world is full of cases where a big company buys a smaller company with great product, only to kill the product. Besides Empeg, Sun and Cobalt comes to my mind.

Not Windows Only

[Big_Al_B]

I haven't bothered to confirm that it's still using HTTP to interact with Logitech servers--as I suspect--but the Harmony OS X Client that I downloaded several weeks ago is a also fully stand-alone package not requiring a separate browser session.

So far I've been very impressed. Prior to this version, I was having a heap of trouble with both OS X and XP SP2 clients not working properly.

Now I've got exactly zero problems and zero complaints. I love my 688.

Re:Not so sure ...

[profplump]

You're aware that you can re-map both the hard and soft buttons arbitrarily, right? If it knows a command to make disks change, you can make any button you like send that command.