Logitech Buys Slim Devices 80
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.
Not so sure ... (Score:3, Informative)
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Can't win...
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Older people and Harmony remotes... (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't have the heart to tell him that you can do just abo
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So I'm still using the Sony RM-AV3000; and I wish I could get a Marantz RC2000 Mk II... my RC2000 Mk I got dropped on the floor just a _few_ too many times....
(It might become moot; I'm thinking of getting rid of the chang
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Also, big suprise was that they have great technical support. I had a question and talked to a real person who was very helpful. The tech support people can even set up your device for you since they store the configuration in their database.
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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]
oh no.... (Score:1)
it's sad news really. nice people @ slim...
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There is a wired-only squeezebox by the way (https://secure.slimdevices.com/order/index.cgi), but for some reason the resellers don't seem to have it in stock.
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I'm a little slow at responding...
Slimserver 6.5 works like charm as far as I'm concerned, and it will stay GPL. There's absolutely nothing Logitech can do about that. Additional features are of course nice, but slimserver is "ready enough" that those can be implemented by third parties if Logitech decided to relicense the code...
I don't think that parts are really a major factor in the price in this case... Or are two-bit displays really that expensive?
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Really? I have never had any problems with Logitech what so ever in the past few years. To the point where I only buy Logitech stuff. The same is true for my friends. What logitech stuff have you guys had problems with? I've never used anything from Slim Devices but I would think that this would be good for them. Logicitech should have the power and money to make what ever they make even better or at the very lest cheaper and easier to find.
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I got into slim when it first came out, and because it had a linux version of the software. my "music box" is exclusively linux and I sure don't want to change that. Corporate shows little regard for open source - just try to find an mp
They've been killing Harmony (Score:1)
The web site for configuring the remote used to be pretty good. Now, it appears I have to use a downloadable application (60 MB) to configure the remote. The application has the worst UI I've seen in a very long time (I'm using the
Well, they've been saying all the right things (Score:2)
Certainly time will be the only way to know for sure, but we have a good amount of faith in Sean Adams, our old CEO, to have made sure that Logitech will allow us to do what we need to do to continue making the products we want to make. They seem to have listened well to him and the other people from Slim in
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On the other hand, maybe Logitech will finally come out with a cheap, displayl
Was it these guys that... (Score:3, Interesting)
Dave
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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 ret
The brand will deteriorate (Score:2)
I know that the *brand* will deteriorate, being now affiliated with a maker of electro-trinkets. They were well on their way to bringing home high fidelity to the masses, but they may just have stepped in a huge puddle of mud.
Oh, how I hope the 'Slimdevice-ishness' will prevail.
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Yep, and they make a good product. I bought one of the first 100 (which were the hand assembled units) - I believe I have #49 - and it still works like a champ. About two years after I bought it I emailed Sean Adams (the CEO) and inquired about the case upgrade whic
hmm, not sure that's a good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
large companies almost ALWAYS ruin smaller ones when they buy them (out).
I have a slim mp3 hardware box. its reasonably well designed and mostly trouble free.
but honestly, I am not going to hope for much more now that they're no longer a small company
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But, sometimes that leads to excellent sales. Like when Rio bought the empegcar player. It had been selling for like $2000, but when Rio cancelled it, they had a firesale and you could pick them up for like $200.
Oddly enough, slim's new "transporter" is also $2000. Here's to Logitech cancelling it and dumping inventory for 90% off MSRP! I'll buy two if that happens.
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I had one but I think mine was closer to $600 (dual drive 60gig unit, I think.)
it was a neat design but not really robust. it had some intermittant problems. and being a pull-out, it had security issues and user inconvenience issues, as well. the drives spinning up too much also ruined the experience for me (not enough ram buffering).
I just don't trust logitech. do they even release linux drivers for their multibutton mice?
I'm sure this is financially good for the SD people but customer
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Of course not. Luckily, Linux (actually X.org) does a decent job of supporting 5-button mice on its own thanks to the standardized USB protocol, but that's all that's supported on my MX510 here at work. The extra buttons (forward/back, etc.) aren't supported yet, unless something's changed recently.
I'm sure this is financially good for the SD people but customers almost never win when some large co. buys a small one
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Squeeze Box (Score:1)
Very interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Will the quality remain top notch in future versions?
Will we see price drops?
Will logitech be able to pull off a killer device that combines the squeezebox with an equally versitile video component? (mpeg,wmv,mov,avi,etc)
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If you are thinking Logitech does bad quality products because of Slashdot and download site comments, you are wrong on your concerns about future quality.
It started to look like a fashion to hate logitech because they are popular and still in business.
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My father, who rarely uses his computer, managed to 'kill' 2 logitech mx1000 mice. When I called tech support, they made me go through the usual stupid BS about new drivers and blah blah, even after explaining that we had 2 of them, 1 on my computer and 1 on his, and I had proven that it was his mouse, not his receiver, that was broken and that mine still worked with his receiver. So I finally get them to say they'll ship another one out.
2 we
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However, there's a difference between making good mice and taking over a small company and not running it into the ground. Logitech makes good-quality mice, and maybe some other things (all being hardware), but these are mass-market items that sell millions of units. Big companies are usually good at that sort of thing: making something that's good enough, and making it in huge
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Nope not a chance. this is the death knoll for the squeezebox.
Nothing like a big company to take a fantastic product from a small company and turn it to utter crap, or kills it... happens every single time.
I Hope (Score:1)
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(The AudioTron scans your entire network looking for Windows/SMB/CIFS shares, and then indexes them. Since most operating systems either have SMB sharing natively in the OS, or provided via Samba and also thus compatible with NAS appliances that share via SMB/CIFS without leaving a PC on.)
This i
crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
My money is on logitech. Glad I bought a squeezebox a few months ago (they are 10lbs of awesome stuffed into a 5lb sack).
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As for buggy, I dunno, it's never crashed once for me, nor has it ever done anything unexpected.
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Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
SlimServer is still GPL (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
SlimServer needs work (Score:2)
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And I already have an existing SQL server in the form of PostgreSQL. I want to use that. Apart from anything else, it's a better database, from ACID to trivial things like actually having useful time/date fields.
But other pieces aren't (Score:2)
Why do I care? Because my 24x7 server is a Sparc. I don't want my tunes to go out just because I am fiddling with or haven't yet booted my desktop machine.
I'm thinking of using a trailing edge notebook instead. Less elegent but it can run everything locall
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http://www.slimdevices.com/au_press_pandorahours.
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- Internet radio - if I want to listen to the local NPR affiliate, I have to setup a playlist with just that radio station
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Squeezebox..... (Score:2)
So long Slim Devices... (Score:5, Insightful)
Congrats Sean Adams & co (Score:2)
Not Windows Only (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Logitech isn't always bad - not *always*. (Score:1)