Slim Devices Squeezebox December 9th, 2003 | by Jeff Fila

Support and Warranty

We can't talk about the product without talking about the company. Slim Devices is held in high regard by their customers because of the quick, hands-on support they provide. During our testing Dean Blackletter, the CTO, promptly responded to our questions via email. Dean as well as Sean Adams (Founder and CEO) and Patrick Cosson (VP Sales and Marketing) all are active participants in the company's support email list. Add to that a group of users from all over the world and you have a very robust testing and update model.

There are several add-on modules created by Slim Devices users and developers to enhance the usefulness of their products. There are user-submitted modules that add such features as: viewing TV listings, email notifications, weather, news and stock reports, caller ID and even a phone book.

As with the SLIMP3, the Squeezebox comes with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee and a one-year limited warranty.

Conclusion

The Squeezebox by Slim Devices does just about everything we would hope out of a networked music player. It can handle compressed and uncompressed digital music and play it back on any audio connection you may have. It looks and sounds great and is incredibly simple to setup and use. With a host of analog and digital outputs, a bright display and connectivity to wired or wireless networks, it is useable for anyone with a digital music collection that wants to listen outside of their computer room.

Besides it's lack of support for WPA encryption the only problem we can see with the Squeezebox is figuring out where to put it. It's so useful in the bedroom, the home theater, the garage, the kitchen and anywhere you may want to listen to music, that you might have a problem deciding where it should go.

Slim Devices has some competition now though. Big companies like Creative and Linksys have networked media products of their own and there are plenty others on the market. With competition comes innovation and we can't wait to see what the next product from Slim Devices will be.

We think that networked media devices are the "next big thing" and have created a section in our forums devoted to these devices. You'll be seeing many more reviews of these devices at Designtechnica in 2004. Check out our forums to discuss the Squeezebox and other devices.