You have the option of syncing stations over a USB connection and the downloadable Slacker Station Refresher software. 'Slacker G2 Portable Radio' was. You have the option of syncing stations over a USB connection and the downloadable Slacker Station Refresher software. 'Slacker G2 portable radio' was.
With the Slacker G2, Slacker introduces some key navigational, design, and usability improvements to its second-generation portable radio player. That said, it's still a flawed device--though far less flawed. It's also a phenomenal concept that may lack mass appeal but will surely delight music lovers who don't have the money to buy all of the tunes they want. Let's start with the refinements. The Slacker G2 is a slimmed-down, slicker version of the bulky and buggy first-gen player; in the new model, all of the station updates (refreshing your song lists and adding new stations) occur over Wi-Fi.
The company's online music service remains the shining star of the Slacker experience, and the new player offers a better portable version of that experience than did. Cisco Mini Usb Console Cable Driver. The basic concept behind the player is simple: You build stations online for free, sync them to the player, and have a player full of customized music stations that play songs at random, based on the acts you selected and on artists whose music resembles theirs. Loan Amortization Schedule.
Syncing is done over the air via Wi-Fi; but if you have a Windows machine, you have the option of syncing stations over a USB connection and the downloadable Slacker Station Refresher software. That software isn't compatible with Macs, but you can still build stations on a Mac and then sync them to your player via Wi-Fi. A Slacker G2 player that supports 25 of your custom-built stations costs $200; a 40-station Slacker G2 player goes for $250., and you can add, refresh, and reconfigure your stations as much as you want. In addition to accommodating the stations you build, the $200 player allows you to drag-and-drop 1GB of music files (AAC, MP3, and WMA) onto the player, while the $250 version supports 3GB of storage. Loading individual files works only on Windows XP and Vista machines; building stations on the Slacker site and syncing them over the air also works with Mac OS X--but as with the first version of the Slacker player, you don't have the option of dragging and dropping your own files onto the player with OS X.
That's not a deal-breaker, since the player's chief draw is the station service, but you'll need a Wi-Fi connection to make the G2 update and sync your stations with Mac OS X. Some glitches that plagued the first-generation player, such as the almost unusable touch strip and the awkward earbuds, have vanished. The new earbuds are a lot more comfortable, but the sound is tinny to a fault. You'll definitely want to upgrade to a better pair of headphones (the device has a standard headphone jack). I used and Phiaton MS 400 headphones for most of my test listening; both of these higher-end models significantly improved the G2's sound quality. Several of the first-gen player's strengths make welcome returns. The 320-by-240-pixel TFT screen is nicely visible in sunlight, and it displays extensive information about bands and albums while a song is playing.
The background data includes extensive band bios and album reviews from All Music Guide--another big reason that the Slacker G2 shines as a device for music discovery. On the other hand, navigation is still buggy; sometimes it has a mind of its own, especially when you connect via Wi-Fi to update your stations. In addition, we couldn't test the sound quality of the device itself due to firmware issues that flip-flopped channels and produced counterintuitive distortion readings (specifically, the device generated higher levels of distortion at lower volume levels, which never happens). As such, the overall rating is pending, because the Slacker G2 does things so differently--even at the level of producing audio--that were unsuitable for it to take.