Slashdot Mirror
Review of Dell's Digital Jukebox
bu115hit writes "Tom's Hardware has a review of Dell's Digital Jukebox. The quick summary is that Dell has provided their own version of an iPod in size and shape, and they gave it better battery life. However, it seems the iPod is still a superior product overall, for ease of use if nothing else."
From Fortune's review:
Dell Unveils Its iPod Kryptonite
Bizarro was an imperfect clone of Superman yet still pulled off the occasional superhero feat. So it is with the Dell DJ.
By Peter Lewis
The evil scientist Lex Luthor used his duplicator ray to try to clone Superman, but something went terribly wrong. The result was Bizarro, a good-natured but ugly and backward version of the Man of Steel. Bizarro was the antithesis of cool; his home planet, Htrae, was square.
When Bizarro had good news to announce, he would say, "This am terrible!"
Which leads us into a discussion of Dell's new Bizarro version of Apple's iPod, called the Dell Digital Jukebox Music Player, or Dell DJ for short. Coming from the square world of Dell instead of the hip world of Apple, it's bigger, heavier, and clunkier than Apple's sleek, suave, elegant iPod, which arrived on the scene two years ago and quickly became the most popular portable digital music player on our home planet, Earth. Even worse, the Musicmatch-backed Dell Music Store is the clumsy, Bizarro counterpart to Apple's brilliant iTunes Music Store.
[...]
Bizarro, the pathetic wretch, was driven mad by constant comparisons with the handsome, smart, and sexy Superman he was meant to emulate. So too must the DJ suffer from inevitable comparisons with the iPod, with its two-year headstart. If the iPod did not exist, the DJ might even lay claim to the title of Best Portable Music Player Since the Sony Walkman.
But the iPod does exist, and so do Apple iTunes and the Apple iTunes Music Store, and thus the Dell DJ is doomed to be merely the second-best player on the market.
It seems these days as if virtually every USB device comes with a warning saying you should not plug it into a hub. Everything wants to be plugged directly into the CPU. Too bad if you have more than two of these devices.
WTF???
It is not just a matter of needing a powered hub, either. The Tom's Hardware review notes that it was a powered hub with which the Dell digital jukebox failed to work.
I don't know enough about the USB spec to know who's wrong, but it seems to me that if USB devices don't work on a hub, either
a) the hub is defective, or
b) the device is defective, or
c) the USB spec itself is defective.
What's the deal? Are hubs supposed to work, or not?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!