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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."
Straight from Steve Jobs's own weblog comes a more succinct review
CONS
- slightly wider (not that much)
- slightly thicker (not that much)
- slightly heavier (not that much)
- not as many songs (after 2500, does it make a difference?)
PROS
- cheaper
- twice the battery life
For a commuter on a budget, this looks like it stands to gain some market share.
libertarianswag.com
I own an iPod and a coworker of mine has the Dell. So I've seen and used both.
They are the only two units for sale right now worth having. The others are bulky, ugly, more expensive...why bother.
In the end I went with the lock-in. I bought the iPod becuase I bought alot of iTunes music, and I love my iTrip FM transmitter.
So Dell's mp3 player has life of "Up to 16 hours", and iPod's battery life is "Over 8 hours". What does this mean?
8h+ == 16h?
This is an awfully sloppy review.
The price comparison links for the iPod say they're for the 20Gb model when in fact they're for the 15Gb model, thus eliminating a major point in favor of the Dell model: no USD$50 Apple premium.
The conclusion makes it sound like there were many problems with the unit, but reading the rest of the pages I found that outside of the reviewer botching the software installation, his only criticism was that the unit isn't a very featureful voice recorder. (And how he expected things to work properly after he canceled the software installation in the middle, I don't understand. Maybe it could have been smoother, but panning it in the review when he did such an unusual thing in the setup just doesn't seem fair.)
There's almost no discussion of playback capabilities. Those of us who've used these devices know that there are issues to watch for: some devices have problems at certain bitrates, or with handling variable bit rate recordings, etc. No apparent effort was made by the reviewer to address those issues. I'd also have appreciated some discussion of the quality of the audio stage, how much power it has, how it performs with quality headphones, etc.
This "review" reads more like a poorly executed "first look" than the product of a reasonable-length, in-depth evaluation.
You know, overreacting aside, I find Apple's choice in regards to the iPods battery very odd.
I look at my Sony Clie and my GBA-SP. Both have a tiny little screw that holds the battery cover on. Both my Clie and the GBA-SP are smaller than the iPod, and yet they still managed to provide user-access to the battery.
I haven't seen the miPod up close yet, but I imagine they don't have a battery cover either.
I think Apple just doesn't like screws.. they're definately anti-screw. Maybe it's because Apple hasn't discovered a way to make them glow yet.
"My only wish is that the IPod Mini came in white."
Don't you know why iPod mini colors were chosen?
Like I've said earlier, the real risk to the Record Labels and the music industry is not Peer-to-Peer networks or piracy, although both may affect them to an extent.
The real hit is going to come in the form of people downloading songs that they like - I do not have to buy an entire album of crap just to listen to one song, and neither do I have to pay $12 for a CD full of crap.
This is the market's way of getting back and eliminating bad music. Sure, there will always be some cross section that will listen to stuff like Britney and the Boybands, but they will largely diminish purely because popular demand for better material will kill them.
Apple, HP, Microsoft and now Dell. Yay! Way to go.
...I just use my $40 MP3 CD player with burned CDs.
The iPod was purchased as my primary entertainment device, and I later purchased a Dell DJ for use with a project that I am working on for a school.
The iPod was purchased based on winning design, features, available accessories (iTrip, CF reader, etc). The Dell DJ was purchased because it was $219 no tax no shipping for the 15MB version, making it by far the cheapest portable device that can store several GB of data.
However the interface on the DJ is horrid. The display does this "windowing" thing where clicking the main button never performs an action but only leads you to a menu of actions. To do the most simple thing in the world, resume playback where you left off, you have to click three times.
The primary clicker is also a joke. The combo scroll wheel is tacky and too loose. Often I will go to click only to have my thumb spin the wheel down instead. The recording button is a nice idea, but you have to hold it down to register, and there is no way to name your recordings so you know what they are. (By the way, this might be good because the way you enter names in other sections is to wheel tediously through letters A-Z, then choose the options to shift to letters a-z, then wheel to the actual letter you want.)
Also, no dock for the DJ. It uses a USB2 connector on the top...bad design. The connection is so tight I was afraid to plug it in for fear of breaking it. Pulling it out makes me just as fearful.
And finally...worst of all...the Dell DJ does not detect as a standard USB2 device! WTF was Dell smoking? Am I supposed to carry the Dell DJ driver CD around at all times? Why not just carry my data on CD instead? The whole point of portable storage is to load it up, and take it anywhere you need the data to access it. The iPod is detected as a standard firewire/USB device on every version of Windows 98SE or higher.
Overall, it will serve its purpose for a prototype, but Dell needs to spend some serious money to come out with a 2nd generation version that addresses these issues. I understand they can't use a wheel like Apple does, but there has GOT to be a better analog input than what they came up with.
Oh, one last nail in the coffin...the include software is from MusicMatch and is without a doubt the worst piece of software I've ever used. There is no automatic sync. The option to sync your player and computer is buried three levels down in the software. The ID3 tags you make in music match don't translate to the player (will sort 1 10 11 12...19 2 20 21 22 on the player, ignores track number). The only saving grace is that as a standard Windows Media device, you can use pretty much any other program to sync the device, but I think Dell was really stupid to sign up with MusicMatch instead of just writing their own (given that Windows does all the work, all they need is a pretty interface with a big "Sync" button).
That's about all that comes to mind. I wouldn't recommdn the Dell unless you were someone who planned to load their entire collection once and then never ever ever touch the player again. If you had to sync/update the Dell DJ on even a weekly basis it would drive you up the wall. Spend the extra $100 and get the 10GB iPod or the extra $40 and get the 4GB iPod mini.
-JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I called Dell sales and Dell technical support, and Dell has no method for replacing the battery (outside of warranty), and the battery is not user replaceable.
(Also, iPod's battery is replaceable, via several different methods.)
yeah, it sounds great to you . and that's what everyone else wants?
Why would you need to take a FLAC audio file on a portable device?
because, some portables are capable of playing through a line-out into good speakers and some players even have near audiophile snr to make a difference.
My God man, why do you need OGG and FLAC support? I have thousands of MP3 and AAC files.
because of freedom. freedom to get an encoders that work on different platforms. because people have already encoded their files this way for their media center. because there's no extra licensing.
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!
I recently owned both a Rio Karma and an iPod after I bought the Karma (20gb) for myself then received an iPod (10gb) as a corporate gift a week later.
/. before:
Just thought I'd point out a couple of things which I haven't seen on
-The iPod is easier to use, and looks cooler, but it will only synch to one PC, so it's significantly harder to pirate your friends' songs. (Since everyone in my office got one, they were a little disappointed when I explained they had to copy mp3s onto a local computer, then copy them onto the iPod in a separate directory using it as an external hard drive, THEN load from there into their iTunes back at home before they could take each others' songs).
-The Karma uses a proprietary filesystem, so if you want to use it as an external hard drive as well, you'll have to install the Rio software on the PC to which you want to transfer files.
-The Karma has a little scroll wheel on the side, which you have to have functional to navigate the OS. However, the design is such that it is most likely to fall on the wheel if you drop it (take a look at a picture of the Karma and you'll see why). After dropping it once, and breaking the wheel, I had to crack the thing open and krazy glue the wheel back into place (nerve racking since it's designed so that dropping glue 5 mm's off will glue the wheel so that it won't turn). My other option was paying $200, or 66% of the price new, to have it fixed by Rio itself. THIS IS A BIG PROBLEM.
-Finally, a nitpick: Rio charges extra to permit mp3 encoding in its software. It's not a big deal to use a third-party encoder, but seriously, WTF?
So I'd say get the Rio Karma for better pricing and pirating capabilities, but keep it encased in bubble wrap or avoid all pavement or something.
As someone who does a lot of travelling and moves around a bit, I see these things as digital wallets. Why else would you want 40 Gb? Dell's device might be more usefull if you could go to any computer with a reasonably modern OS and plug it in, without needing administrative access to install drivers.
There is another problem, USB. The iPod has firewire which doesn't need a host, I can only speculate that this is one of the reasons why Belkin chose firewire for their card reader. USB is good, it's good to have both, but when you want flexibility, USB has it's issues.
Sometimes it's just the little things that count, that make a good design great. When I go to work and work on pc hardware and Windows, I miss the details, nuance and elegance that makes working with my Mac at home a joy to use.
Sorry.... mod this down if like.... but you get what you pay for and when you buy Dell you're not paying a lot. I don't own an iPod nor am I a fan of Apple but I have extensive experience with Dell products and wouldn't spend a dime of my hard-earned cash on anything they sell.
I imagine that the Dell probably does have better battery life than the iPod. But having owned both a Dell Inspiron and now a Powerbook, I know that - at least when it comes to laptop computers - Apple gives a much closer-to-the-truth estimate of expected battery life than Dell does. Brand new, my Inspiron would get maybe half the battery life that Dell said it should (slightly over two hours in real life; Dell was saying a bit over four).
#DeleteChrome
I've had mine since before the holidays (actually meant to do a review and never got around to it). Worked perfectly out of the box. My wife and I used it for a cross country trip over the Christmas break, and never had an issue with it. I would put 16 hours as minimum for battery life. It survived on one charge the entire distance from Northern Virginia to Omaha (about 1200 miles, and 18 hours) and still had two bars on the meter left. Obviously - batteries are always a YMMV.
Altho not as small as the iPod, it has a more rugged feel to it. More solid, and less fragile. Plus it doesn't look so friggin' girlie.
Sound is great, but those earbuds *are* crap. The thing puts out enough power to push studio headphones - cheap ones, yes, but still. On good phones it sounds great.
The version of MusicMatch included with it sucks. For those (like myself) that hate reading manuals, it is absolutely horrible. But the Windows Media Player access is logical, so I normally use that.
If you do not have USB 2.0, get it. My initial transfer of about 11GB of songs took overnight. I bought a 2.0 card the next day. Transfers are exponentially faster now. Oh, and I run it through an *unpowered* hub when I use the USB1.x connection, and never had any problems with it being detected.
Over all, I like it. Plus it's well padded with the C note I saved by avoiding Apple.
But what about my +2 iPod of strength and my +1 Headphones of Music? Then it's a perfect 10, and it's perfect sounding assuming the minijack doesn't make it's saving throw.
Dell licensed the software from Creative Zen series.
I feel that I won't get modded up because i'm so late to the thread. (and i live for karma)
But I am very surprised that nobody has mentioned the very important facts about Dell Jukebox. In fact, I am close to believing that everybody is talking out of their ass when it comes to hdd mp3 players.
My brother has a Creative Jen Xtra. It cost 270 bucks for 30gb model. It's the cheapest hdd player ever when it comes to gb/dollar. I found a guy who had a Dell Jukebox. Both of them had the exact same interface. I didn't see enough of the dell to see if it's got all the creative's EAX stuff, but the user interface is exactly the same.
Now, you don't know how bad the interface is. And frankly, if you've never really used iPod, I suppose you'd think it's pretty nifty. You just don't really know how good life can be.
First of all, dell/creative doesn't work as usb mass storage device. Even iPod works as firewire mass storage device!! The device driver and the provided software sucks. Again, perhaps you don't know how good things can be unless you are used to iTunes/iPod combo. All I know is that the drivers for dell/creative cause crashes on windows xp sometimes and half of the times it doesn't crash, it doesn't work. It's like crapshoot.
On the dell/creative interface, it is the most convoluted thing. No designers in the world has ever come up with how you can comfortably present all the complexity of hdd mp3 device. No one. For example, in iPod, there is no way to delete songs or find bps of songs or edit existing playlists. Apple made a decision when they decided to hide all that for simplicity of use.
On dell/creative, you can do all of the above. The tradeoff? You can't just play a song by clicking on it! When you click on a song, it brings up a menu and you scroll to "play this song" and it enters the "currently selected" section where it will be played. Most operations make you hunt through menus and godawful number of clicks.
Sizes. dell/creative is big. I can use my iPod comfortably with three fingers. My index finger supports iPod, my middle finger balances, my thumb clicks buttons. I have to use the whole hand to hold the dell/creative. Especially creative zen is awkward because there are buttons to operate on the side of the players. You have to coordinate all five fingers which all has buttons assigned to it.
I bet you, if I had gotten dell/creative about an year ago, i would have thought it was pretty sweet. But alas, I got an iPod. I know how good things can be. I tell you, no reviewers have spent enough time with any number of mp3 players to really know how good iPod is compared to the others. Trust me, we wouldn't be hearing about no iPod killers.
For the records, I am an ex-linux user of about 3-4 years. Then I became freebsd user. Then I got a used crt imac g3 600mhz (fastest computer i own). My freebsd server still serves files over samba and acts as the gateway.
Check out the iRiver iHP-120 (and the new 140 model) . Purely in my opinion, the iHP-120 sounds a lot better than the iPod. It also has a longer battery life (I get about 12 hours out of it) and it can play WMA, MP3, WAV and yes, Ogg Vorbis. It can also record direct to WAV or MP3, has a pretty decent FM tuner, and 20 gig of HDD space (or 40 gig on the iHP-140). It's a good solid all-metal construction and it's about the same size as the iPod. If you're considering buying an iPod, you really owe it to yourself to read up on this beauty first.