Slacker Portable Player

The Slacker Portable Player is one method of consuming the Slacker Personal Radio service (review here). Without a doubt, the Portable Player is the best feature of Slacker. The ability to have custom internet radio stations but still take them with you where there isn't a connection is great. Since I ordered the Portable Player I haven't spent a day without it either in my pocket or in my car. I've nearly stopped burning my MP3 cd's to play in the car, and I'm not even sure where my mp3 player is.

The player is outfitted with a USB port and a wifi card. You use the USB port to charge the player and, on a windows computer, to sync up your music. Though, I almost exclusively use the wifi connection to sync. It works effortlessly, and works while still playing music. With the windows software, you are able to load up your own MP3's on the device (no encrypted wma's though). Or if you have a Slacker subscription, anything you've favorited will automatically show up in the on-demand music library on the device. The subscription isn't required, however. The Portable Player works just fine on the free plan, if you can stand the (very) occasional audio ad.

Ultimately I like the player enough that it's replaced everything else as my primary mp3 player. The only thing to keep in mind, is that the Portable Player is a good well built device, but with beta quality firmware. This means I do experience the occasional lock-up or jittery audio, but it's easily remedied and the Slacker tech support folks are phenomenal. The firmware releases have been fairly frequent and tend to fix the most common problems that are being posted on the forums. I'd still recommend a Slacker Portable Player to anyone that doesn't want to have to load their player with music (hence the name Slacker).

Slacker Personal Radio

Slacker Personal Radio is an online radio service that learns what you like to listen to. With many stations programmed by DJs, and the capability to create a custom station, there's always something on to listen to. As you favorite (song plays more often) or ban (song never plays again) songs, the new picks become more and more customized. I've found that I'm banning less songs because the radio is playing more that I like. All this works with the free product. Also available is a subscription model which removes the ads from all stations and from the website. With a subscription, every song you've favorited becomes available for on-demand play from the web, software, and portable players.

The radio product can be consumed in a few different ways. The web interface lets you listen to the radio anywhere you have an internet connection. I've been able to listen consistantly via my EVDO connection with the same quality that I can via my cable modem.

On Windows machines you can use the Slacker Software Player to listen. The interface looks identical to the web-based product. It allows for CD quality music as well as managing the saved songs on the Slacker Portable.

Lastly, you can purchase a Slacker Portable player. The Portable Player has a Wi-Fi card and USB Port. With a Windows computer, you can synchronize the player via USB. It works equally well over Wi-Fi. In fact, I rarely use the USB port for anything more than the requisite battery charge. I personally think the Portable Player is by far the best feature of the Slacker service. You can find a review of the Portable Player here.

Ultimately, the Slacker Personal Radio service is fantastic. The only time it's failed me is when I don't even know what I want to listen to and for that I can think of no solution.

Some radio stations I've created:

• Light Acoustic Pop/Rock
• Club/Lounge