Digital Trends

Slim Devices SLIMP3 Player November 11th, 2003 | by Jeff Fila

Using The SLIMP3

We were very impressed by the ease of use and setup of the player and software. The manual is short and to the point, and the installation was a breeze. Navigating with the remote control and bright display was simple.

Playing music is as simple as browsing through your music folders, finding an album or song and hitting play. You can shuffle or repeat just like a regular CD player. You can search for music by artist, title, album or genre and the player displays ID3 tags in the format you choose. You can play whole albums, music by only a specific artist, queue up songs on-the-fly and create, edit and save playlists with the remote control. The device supports .pls, CUE, and .m3u playlist files.

Because the SLIMP3 player is connected to a server, there is no limit to the amount of music that you can have access to. More hard drive space can be added to the server computer if and when you run out of room.

The response time on the server was almost instantaneous. We tried to slow it down by picking random songs spread out on the hard disk but each song played instantly when we selected it. We tried the server on both Linux and Windows XP and tested the server software on two different PCs. There was no noticeable difference in performance between a 500mhz Pentium III with 384mb of RAM and an Athlon XP1600+ with 512mb of RAM. The server requires very little resources. The company lists the minimum requirements for the server as a 300mhz Pentium II with 128mb of memory. Remember though, the server does not need to be dedicated — it can be run on your regular workstation.

One great thing about the web interface is the ability to control your player from any computer in the house. We did this while hosting a party and guests had a lot of fun browsing through the music on a laptop and putting their favorite songs in the queue. The player can be controlled by the remote control or through the Web interface.

The Web-based server software. Click for a larger image.

The SLIMP3 server supports multiple players. A player can be either a SLIMP3 device or music player software on a home computer. The company actually suggests that potential customers download the free server software to try on their PC before they purchase. Since it's Web-based, it runs on all platforms.The server software can synch the playback on two or more SLIMP3 players so that the same music can be played at several locations throughout the house. It can also play different music at the same time on different players. We were able to do this with no noticeable lag in server response.  

The SLIMP3 is not just a music player. When the player is off, the display shows the current date and time by default. It can be used as an alarm clock and will play your selected music when it turns on. There is also a sleep timer to shut it off automatically. Several developers have contributed modules to the player that greatly extend its features. Some of the many user-submitted modules include: TV listings, email, caller ID, phone book, stock ticker, weather and even a BBC news ticker.