View Full Version : Slacker.com portable radio
I was thinking of getting this service for my hike next year. Has any of you tried this www.slacker.com (http://www.slacker.com).?
Johnny Thunder
11-12-2008, 18:14
Terry,
I used the Slacker (beta) in the office before me hike. Liked it...what is this portable radio about? How does it connect to the slacker servers?
go to the web site because its hard to explain how it works . thats why I was asking for help.
Slacker is an awesome site. What you can do with their music player is go to any wifi hotspot and download the stations you want (there is a wide variety, including listings by individual artist) The next time you get to a hotspot, you can change your music. It is like an infinite playlist
Johnny Thunder
11-15-2008, 01:03
I just ordered one and will check back in once I get it figured out.
thanks, I look forward to hearing about it. the one problem i see is the batt. life is only 15 hr.
Johnny Thunder
11-23-2008, 12:44
OK...after about a week of messing with the Slacker here are some thoughts...
The 15 hour battery life seems a bit inflated. It is more like the juice I got from my Ipod Video. So, if you use it without searching, scrolling, viewing, skipping, etc then you will get closer to 15 hours. But, if you do any of those things the screen just sucks the battery life. It is a bear to charge so don't expect to walk out of the laundromat with fresh clothes and full juice...it takes more like 2 hours to get full bars.
The music variety is amazing...and I've only scratched the surface as far as creating my own stations. The DJ's/Programmers have got a pretty good handle on what popular songs should be loaded. Unfortunately, they don't play a lot of B-sides...so, if you have a hankering to hear "Welcome to the Machine" you're more likely to get "Wish You Were Here." They do have 1MB of space to load your own MP3's so that accomplishes some of it.
Another thing to consider is that to renew the "license" on the songs/device you need to sync it to their server at least once every 30 days. This is an opportunity to refresh the songs and swap out the ones you've told the device you no longer want to have in rotation. It's an easy process if you have access to wireless internet. But, if you are at a hostel or library without wireless you need to download a program from slacker.com. You won't make a lot of friends doing this sort of thing up and down the trail so I'd try to plan ahead.
I've enjoyed it so far. My girl destroyed my Ipod about a year ago and my laptop died about a month before my hike and took my 60 gig music library with it. So far the Slacker seems like an interesting fix.
thanks for the info. i like the endless playlist but i need more batt. life. i play my mp3 around 8-10 hrs a day on the trail so i dont see that working for me. thank you for the review. terry7