No, you can’t burn the songs saved in your library to a CD.

As for a speaker system, you could get any type of portable speaker that has a line in and use that with the portable. Just connect them with a short patch cable. That’s what I do. )

The free service was the selling point for me. There have been other music services that allowed you to ‘download’ all the songs you wanted for paying a fee every month. The catch was that your songs would expire if you canceled your contract or they went out of business.

Thank you for your comments. I really like mine too. The only thing that annoys me is that the songs sometimes skip at the beginning. Today it’s been really bad for some reason. I sure hope this gets fixed in the next firmware update.

I decided to go ahead and pay for the premium service so that I can skip sounds as many times as I like, and save songs to my library. So far I’m really happy with this purchase.

I must be the target demographic, because I listen to etn.fm or pandora all time time and this basically puts that in my hands. The screen is very nice, and it doesn’t bother me that all it does is music…I have a Zune I load up with my DVD’s and MP3’s.

If you look at it as a compliment to your Zune or Ipod, it makes sense. And the best part is that there is no extra monthly fee.

Here’s hoping my particular unit holds up and that they don’t go out of business anytime soon…I’m very happy with my purchase.

No video playing capabilities. That would be a great new feature though… Even if it was only music videos )

That’s a great deal via Best Buy.

as an aside, I notice that Buy.com has it for $189.99 shipped right now.

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=206165764

[Edited at July 17, 2008 08:47:40 AM.]

4) The only kind of customer/technical support I see on Slacker’s website is via e-mail. Don’t they have an 800 # or direct help?

Slacker does have a few different Customer Support Tools… First, email (Support@slacker.com), secondly, A live chat support during business hours, and finally Official Forums.

Hopes that answers your question.

1. That’s correct. If you want to save tracks on the portable player, you have to have the premium subscription. Once you have subscribed, then when you hear a song on the portable that you want to ‘keep’, you press the heart button. That song will then show up in the Library section of your portable. You can play it anytime you want, over and over…

2. You don’t need a PC to activate your account, you need access to a browser though. You just have to have an account on the Slacker.com website, login and then associate the player with your account. If you order a player online through their site, this step will already be done. If you don’t have access to WiFi, then yes, you’ll need a Window PC in order to charge and sync the portable via USB. Mac users that don’t have access to WiFi will be SOL. Firmware updates can be done via WiFi.

3. When you’re out of range of WiFi, you can listen to whatever content is currently on the player. It only uses WiFi to sync new content. Once it’s synced, it’s on there and doesn’t require a connection.

4. I don’t know anything about their customer service and at the moment, I can’t access their website because they have the slacker.com website blocked here at my day job because it’s TV/Radio/Entertainment related.

Hope this helps… )

Thanks for one of the more recent and informative reviews of the Slacker Portable. I still have a few basic and important questions which seem to be contradicted by various other reviewers:

1) I have read that in order to save particular songs you willl need to purchase the Premium subscription. The only thing the player retains are your stations and your favorite-type selections which it will retain in your account.

2) The use of a PC is said to be necessary to activate your account when without a wi-fi signal or to refresh your previous selections. In addition, any software updates would be best be done through a USB connection to the website.

3) When not within wi-fi range with a non-subscription player what exactly are you able to listen to when offline?

4) The only kind of customer/technical support I see on Slacker’s website is via e-mail. Don’t they have an 800 # or direct help?

Many thanks if you could bring more clarity to these issues and it would be much appreciated as Slacker’s website is short on details.

I think you might be missing the fact that the Slacker Portable is not a streaming device at all. It downloads the content either by WiFi or USB and then it’s on the device so that you can listen anywhere. In a plane, in a cave, where ever. You don’t need to be connected to the service to listen. The services you’ve linked to are interesting, but they all require you to have a data connect in order to listen. )

Every terrestrial radio station with a web stream, linked direct to the stream URL so no BS webplayers or ad viewing required.

Works great on Windows Mobile and my Treo 650, though in some cases where its an MP3 stream you need something like Mortplayer.

No fees, just data connection (GPRS, WiFi, etc.) of some kind required.

You also aren’t limited to the genres they supply; you can define your own stations by selecting artists. You can choose one artist (whether or not they have it in their catalog) and simply let it play what it considers to be similar, or you can select from the catalog of artists to make a custom station. This isn’t quite like making a playlist on your iPod though — since the Slacker is supposed to be “radio”, it will still insert tracks from related artists, the amount depending on how many artists you picked for your custom station. (Apparently this is a rather important distinction for licensing — if you could create a station which only played one or two artists, it would be download-on-demand, not streaming radio.)

The web player is ad-supported as well, so you can try it for free, and it will sync your stations to the portable over wifi. I quite like the web service, though I’ve held off on buying the portable… I’m waiting to see what happens with it in the future before i start carrying yet another device in my pocket. (The iPod is non-negotiable, and i have XM in the car. Most of the time I’m sitting at my desk in my home office so I don’t really need a portable anyway.)

I listen to it on the train on the way to work, and it operates just like any other web stream, with a clean, easy to use interface.

Since I have an unlimited data plan, its a non-issue on the connectivity.

The only downside at all is the battery usage, which is high because the radio is full-on the whole time. My hi-cap battery takes care of that issue.

Having virtually unlimited music in every genre anytime I have my MDA with me means my dependence on MP3’s is very limited, and the 2gb limitation of the platform is much less an issue.

[Edited at July 11, 2008 22:22:06 PM.]

Hundreds of stations with no limits, if its on Live 365 yo can play it as long as you have a data connection.

It does not do any storage, pre-se, or song sharing, etc..

[Edited at July 11, 2008 20:14:52 PM.]