This is Slacker’s most unique feature, actually, because other streaming services don’t do any offline caching, so Slacker is definitely worth a look if you aren’t connected 100% of the time, whether you use the G2 or your phone/tablet.

I was considering paying for the premium service as I paid for with Launch. After reading your comments, I am definitely paying for premium Slacker.

One note, however, is that the current price for a year is $3.99 per month. I don’t know if the price varies if you have a G1/G2, but for just the web-only interface, that’s a great price. Yahoo’s “suggested” alternative is Rhapsody. They want like $14 per month.

Oh, and it appears that Slacker.com is integrated with Amazon’s music interface. (When you click “buy this”, it takes you to Amazon.) Amazon’s system allows you to buy and download music with no DRM – just pure MP3′s. I’m very happy with that.

I’m almost wondering if you have a dud unit… Rob, what do you think? Is your G2 sluggish or have crappy audio?

The electronic and techno stations play very little actual electronica or techno. And my custom station has a lot of artists that Slacker obviously doesn’t have available, even if you can choose them for your list. It’s extensive, but I never hear most of the one’s I’ve chosen.

I’ll try deleting a few of the stations I don’t use and see if that helps, but I’m skeptical. My customized station basically plays the same songs by the same 6-8 artists over and over again. I’m starting to really dislike Kraftwerk.

…well, at least the 3 songs that keep repeating..it used to be 5, but I finally banned two of them.

edit: I forgot to add that I’ve had the software bluescreen me a couple of times when I disconnect after a refresh. Not a huge deal, but it makes things interesting.

[Edited at November 13, 2008 22:43:00 PM.]

I don’t have much to add about the actual features of the device, but there are a few tips I can pass along if you use the Slacker player.

Though you can fit 25 stations into the smaller model or 40 into the larger one, it’s better if you don’t max it out, because the player will automatically use the leftover space for more songs for the stations you listen to most, so you get less repetition between updates.

If you have the premium service and save a song on the web player, you can (licensing permitting) have it transferred to the portable player on the next update. The reverse is not true; if you heart a song on the portable it will be marked as a favorite on the web, but not saved there.

The free service is quite good for the price The advertising is not too frequent, and only a few channels have DJs at the moment. But I find the premium service to be a decent value just for the ability to save songs — between that and the complete lack of ads, it’s like satellite with much better sound quality. Another nice feature of the premium service is that you can “request” songs by browsing Slacker’s library (in the web player) and marking them as favorites without waiting for them to be played first. Free users can do this a limited number of times, but with the premium service you can, if you have the time, build a station almost entirely out of individual songs.

If you use Windows, the G2 should be recognized by Windows Media Player for downloading your own music, and with a small client installation it will also update your stations every time you plug it in. Wifi is just as easy, with an auto-update when you plug it in to charge.

The dock connector on the bottom is apparently some kind of emerging standard for non-iPod car audio stuff. In this case “emerging” means nothing else uses it yet, and “standard” means we don’t know yet whether anything else will. I guess Slacker gets a few points for trying, though, and hopefully they’ll come out with a car dock at some point — if they do, I might be tempted to buy a second player for semi-permanent car installation, updating it when I pull into the driveway…

I’ve had pretty good results customizing stations so far. I have a personal replacement for XM 41 the Boneyard (RIP) that is better (for my tastes, anyway) than the original, and with a few favorites and bans I’ve got a couple of the Slacker-programmed stations sounding quite nice as well. I also like how their Smooth Jazz and Chill stations have non-vocal versions, which is something you can’t get on satellite right now. As a compulsive perfectionist I love the amount of tweaking you can do to your personalized stations, although I could easily spend more time tweaking than just listening