This is probably not the best place for an extensive discussion about
MP3beamer or Linspire, so I want to be judicious in my posts to this
list but I do feel compelled to respond to a couple of points:
First point:
> Also why would anyone buy this, I do not see what it does that
> Slimserver and EAC can not do?
Nothing, except be easier to set up and use. For some portion of
the market, that makes all the difference.
There are actually some meaningful features that MP3beamer has which
make it unique that go beyond easy setup and maintenance which we do
have. For example there is a sync program which allows someone to mirror
all the songs from MP3beamer onto a local machine. This is critical for
times when you don't have a fat (or sometimes ANY) net connection to
your music server. Before jumping on a plane you can sync your laptop
and it will have all your music for remote playback for example.
For those people with iTunes they can access their music directly in
iTunes as if it were on their local computer which is quite handy.
MP3beamer supports the auto-discovery and streaming protocols of iTunes
which makes it work as well as another iTunes client.
Also for the 10MM iPod owners they can load their ipods with entire
library of songs from MP3beamer. These are a few of the significant
features and there are screenshots and video demonstrations of all of
these on MP3beamer at:
See: http://www.mp3beamer.com/screenshots.html
Some people may find these features valuable and others may not. Choice
is good. We also think it's ok to charge a fair price for software. Some
may disagree, that's ok.
As for the for comment that Linspire doesn't do anything for open source
I hope you will allow me a couple sentences in our defense. I would
politely refer you to http://www.linspire.com/opensource. We have given
millions of dollars to open source initiatives. This is real money that
I have personally written checks for. Multiple times we have helped some
teams make payroll so they can continue their important work on key open
source initiatives. We have also directly championed what we think are
critical categories such as:
VOIP - www.phonegaim.com
HTML WYSIWYG editor - Nvu.com
Mozilla browser and email
Music manager - Lsongs
Photo manager - Lphoto
etc.
Plus we're trying to push desktop Linux into mainstream distribution
(CompUSA, Bestbuy, Frys, etc) which takes substantial investment. We
understand that our goals and focus may not be consistent with other
very technically minded people. But I do believe if anyone is judging
Linspire as a good net/open source citizen and looks at the facts they
will come to a positive conclusion.
If anyone has other comments or questions about Linspire, please email
me off list at michael (AT) linspire (DOT) com so as to not clog this mailing list
with irrelevant messages and I'll do my best to respond.
-- MR
MP3beamer or Linspire, so I want to be judicious in my posts to this
list but I do feel compelled to respond to a couple of points:
First point:
> Also why would anyone buy this, I do not see what it does that
> Slimserver and EAC can not do?
Nothing, except be easier to set up and use. For some portion of
the market, that makes all the difference.
There are actually some meaningful features that MP3beamer has which
make it unique that go beyond easy setup and maintenance which we do
have. For example there is a sync program which allows someone to mirror
all the songs from MP3beamer onto a local machine. This is critical for
times when you don't have a fat (or sometimes ANY) net connection to
your music server. Before jumping on a plane you can sync your laptop
and it will have all your music for remote playback for example.
For those people with iTunes they can access their music directly in
iTunes as if it were on their local computer which is quite handy.
MP3beamer supports the auto-discovery and streaming protocols of iTunes
which makes it work as well as another iTunes client.
Also for the 10MM iPod owners they can load their ipods with entire
library of songs from MP3beamer. These are a few of the significant
features and there are screenshots and video demonstrations of all of
these on MP3beamer at:
See: http://www.mp3beamer.com/screenshots.html
Some people may find these features valuable and others may not. Choice
is good. We also think it's ok to charge a fair price for software. Some
may disagree, that's ok.
As for the for comment that Linspire doesn't do anything for open source
I hope you will allow me a couple sentences in our defense. I would
politely refer you to http://www.linspire.com/opensource. We have given
millions of dollars to open source initiatives. This is real money that
I have personally written checks for. Multiple times we have helped some
teams make payroll so they can continue their important work on key open
source initiatives. We have also directly championed what we think are
critical categories such as:
VOIP - www.phonegaim.com
HTML WYSIWYG editor - Nvu.com
Mozilla browser and email
Music manager - Lsongs
Photo manager - Lphoto
etc.
Plus we're trying to push desktop Linux into mainstream distribution
(CompUSA, Bestbuy, Frys, etc) which takes substantial investment. We
understand that our goals and focus may not be consistent with other
very technically minded people. But I do believe if anyone is judging
Linspire as a good net/open source citizen and looks at the facts they
will come to a positive conclusion.
If anyone has other comments or questions about Linspire, please email
me off list at michael (AT) linspire (DOT) com so as to not clog this mailing list
with irrelevant messages and I'll do my best to respond.
-- MR
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