Logitech to acquire Slim Devices!

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Peter_N=F5u?=]

Congratulations!

I see no immediate impact on my own Slim relationship, but note happily
that this deal just possibly might be a beachhead into mainstream
consumption of electronic gadgets, for a heavily open sourced community
product development participation model. Hopefully more mainstream media
will report on the benifits of this, and others might follow... dream on :-)

peace,
peter

[gb115b]

cool, i hope this will let slim get devices into more households...

and you can say you were there when it all began!

I'll put my slimp3 next to my 1st gen ipod in the trophy cabinet....

also i hope that this will enable a more consumer-product (as oopose to geek-toy) approach. I'd love to see slim products with the ease of use / setup - and remote! of Sonos...

while keeping all the best it has to offer...open software, great plugin architecture...frequent software updates...

[utowana]

When I purchased my SB, I immediately started to worry about the viability of SlimDevices. Will they be there forever for me? I worried even more after I fell in love with the product, the service, the forum, even the server software (despite some fits and starts). I work for a company that is positioning itself to be purchased (someday). The American way. Do good work and be rewarded for it. Things have to change at SD. It is inevitable. Corporate will slowly encroach. I want my little company back...I'll take the anxiety. Good for the guys at SD. They deserve it, but we didn't.

It is rare to have a product in the marketplace that engenders loyalty and passion. I hope you can sustain that.

Neurotically yours....

[Michaelwagner]

Can he park it any better than the Merc he had a few years ago?

Low blow! :-)

And where was the link to that picture?

[Michaelwagner]

One thing I have to ask ... will the cash infusion mean that a homeplug version might be possible now?

And I second the comment about having to being prepared for a bunch of newbies in the beginner forum.

[interspectrum]

Anyone who has worked in software development knows how expensive it can be, even in open source.

One of the problems we have seen already is the lack of proprietary formats and DRM support. This requires licensing, which requires money.

Now Slim Devices has some deep pockets behind them to support more of these formats. First thing I can think of is Play For Sure and/or Zun support.

Also, I would love to see a sqeezebox video player. Do with video what you do with audio. I have never bought a "media player" because all of the ones I have looked at do not support the audio formats that my slimserver/sqeezebox 2 does.

So I say good move guys! I do hope that Logitech remembers why they bought you and also remembers that many buyouts fail because executives forget why they bought a company and then go in and kill those very things that made the old company work!

[jeffluckett]

I think it's definitely too early to tell how this is going to impact the future generations of the SqueezeBox and Transporter lines ... my personal feeling is that they're going to loose some "Street Cred" if/when logitech puts thier big goofy-looking logo on the product.

I am quite happy that I bought a pre-logitch device, because I will always have that "known quantity" for as long as it continues to operate. Hopefully it'll last as long as some of the other electronics in my posession ... some on the order of decades.

That said, I'm future-proofing myself by keeping copies of old SlimServer versions so I know I'll always have something that works with my SB, even if Logitech manages to bumble up the Server software down the line in some capacity or other.

I also worry about the future of the SqueezeNetwork ... I don't see that as much of a cash cow ... there's no advertising ... maybe there's some kick-back from Pandora subscriptions ... dunno. I can't see Logitech keeping SqueezeNetwork alive if it is mostly liability with little potential for profit.

I predict that SqueezeNetwork will either be scuttled, become a fee-based subscription service, or be riddled with advertising (unless you pay your ransom and subscribe).

Fortunately I'm not "addicted" to SqueezeNetwork, and I have my old server software which supports internet radio, and my old hardware that isn't 'locked down' at the firmware level from being able to have the flexibility I now enjoy.

I know this is fairly pessimistic view of the future of SlimDevice's product line ... but history shows what happens in cases where a small, innovative, flexible, service-oriented company is taken over by a publicly traded Corp-monster who's primary responsibility is to shareholders, and customers are just money trees to be plucked and groomed only enough that they keep sprouting dollar bills. I present as "Exhibit A" what happened to Linksys. They were becoming quite popular among the "Hacker" crowd due to their support of open source ... the WAP54G was highly regarded as a great product before V.5. Then Cisco came in ... and hamstrung the 54G with VxWorks and then introduced a "Hackable" version of the router at a higher price-point. Way to squeeze the blood out of the very community that was making the original product popular.

That said ... I have been using Logitech hardware for years, and invariably they have worked well ... I've never had to make a call to thier support dep't. so I can't comment on that. I do hope that they "do right" by the SlimDevice line and maintain its character. I also hope they do a better job with SlimServer than they have with thier MouseWare in the past ... or (preferably) keep thier developers away from the software.

[Michaelwagner]

I am an old Amiga user - bought the original 1000 when it hit the shelves.

Amiga was bought by Commodore. Commodore was no stranger to computers, having been involved with the 6502 development and having brought the PET and the 64 to market.

And yet, they didn't understand what they had bought, had less than zero clue how to market it .... and they totally botched it.

I hope Logitech understands what they have bought.

[)p(]

We just introduced Harmony 1000, a high end, touch screen remote control. Would you consider a $500 remote control a niche product?
Our overall strategy is to become more prominent in the living room. Transporter gives us an opportunity to test new price points. This has been the trend for Logitech in the past few years.

Junien

The design of the 1000 sure comes close to the brushed metal rounded corners look of the sb3 already...seems like a pretty good basis for creating the sb remote everyone seems to want

peter

[Pale Blue Ego]

Paranoid thoughts:

If Logitech, who just launched a product in this category, saw Slim as a major threat, then $20 million is a drop in the bucket. If they wanted to kill the SB so it wouldn't compete with their own product, this is a cheap way to do it.