I thought the Inspiron line was only killed off and replaced by Vostro on the Small Business side of Fell. AFAIK, Inspiron is alive and well on Home/Home Office. In fact, they recently introduced an Inspiron line of desktops as well. (The merits of this are another discussion.)
Energy and Synergy? You think that's disgusting? How about a marketing manager type coming into the lab and talking for 45 minutes about how we were all doing a great job, our profits were through the roof, and that we would all be "Value Captured."
When he stopped broadcasting and took questions, we all got to find out that "value captured" was a euphamism for "repurposed" which was a euphamism for "outsourced" which itself was a euphamism for us having the privelege of training our indian replacements for 3 months before being let go.
Yes this was at HP. 2 years ago.
Well as I tried to explain, I'm a new account, but not a new reader of Slashdot. I was certainly naive in that I didn't realize an informal discussion of mp3 players would call my credibility into question. After all, I'm not recommending firewall settings, kernel mods, or something mission critical.
But you are right, there is no way to assess my credibility. And I don't think it's worth anyone's time to continue trying to do so.
What I marvel at is the forensics employed to "suggest" that I'm being paid to contribute. A well structured post that conveys to the standards of persuasive writing and employs a diction that is not tired. (Note, I'm paraphrasing the actual words of Tyger...I think that's the general gist of it.) I've been reading slashdot on and off for years, and I don't think that it's all that unusual.
Still, it was amusing, frusterating, and surreal all at the same time. I'll continue to post on topics that I am interested in...and this means you'll likely be hearing my views on mp3 players as pertinent articles are posted. I will continue to do so in whatever style I enjoy, and you may continue to suggest I'm in the employ of Neuros.
I don't feel a particular need to make myself credible because frankly, I don't think anything I said calls into question my credibility as a user of the Neuros and someone who takes an interest in mp3 players in general. If I was passing myself off as a heart surgeon and suggesting everyone should get a shiny new stent implanted in their artery, I could see the concern. How ironic that it is when my credentials as an average joe get called into question that things take a turn for the surreal.
Oh well... till next time, I suppose.
Well, I think if you read the Neuros forums you will get independent confirmation of this fact by users. If that's not enough, you can post a direct question on the forums. I can tell you firsthand that it plays ogg in both configuration. Or you could listen to Starkey (who if it's the same starkey that posts on the forums) is the project manager for the Neuros Database Manipulator http://neurosdbm.sourceforge.net
Thanks for the compliment, I think. But really, I was just trying to participate. I didn't really think that post sounded like an advertisement and I didn't write it with the motivation to help Neuros sell anything. I wrote it because I had some thoughts on the topic at hand and also had an opinion that the Neuros while not perfect, does have some great functionality at a great price.
And please, I wish you'd redact your statement about my grammar being perfect.;P
Well, there's no proving to you if you already have your minds made up. You are indeed correct that my account is new today (yesterday) and that I've posted less than 20 messages. You might even be curious why that is. Certainly leaping to the conclusion that I'm a paid mole for Digital Innovations/Neuros is one conclusion you could jump to.
However, there is another explanation. Mainly, that I had an account ages ago...I'm talking pre Natalie Portman...pre Hot Grits...pre goatguy...pre VA Linux...pre mod revision...back even before the days when mentioning Slashdot on your resume would get you noticed by brainless HR drones (thankfully, this bit of fluff has gone by the wayside). When I left grad school and got a 9-X job, I first forgot my password, then after time, my account name, eventually I stopped even looking at Slashdot. Thanks to Mozilla/Firebird's tabbed browsing, I have recently been able to set/. as on of several industry related sites that open when I start the browser. So naturally, I started reading more slashdot, posting anonymously, and generally following what's going on. I figured that since I was participating, I might as well get an account (especially since/. limits the number of AC posts per day per IP address). Also, it gets tedious to have to manually set article settings (0,Nested, Oldest First) every tiem I want to read a discussion.
There you have it. The explanation. No doubt you will find reasons that it is not good enough, fraught with holes, and basically a lame attempt to distract you from uncovering the vast Neuros advertising campaign being perpetrated on/.
On a related note, it is amusing that your suspicions are so easily raised. What you have here is nothing more than someone who enjoys discourse and wanted to participate on a topic he is knowledgeable about and has an opinion on.
Go ahead and flame me for it, or try to manufacture conspiratorial motivations...but when it comes right down to it, whether you are right or wrong (and you ARE wrong in your assertion), it all amounts to nothing more than twaddle in a hill of beans.
You may not like me participating, you may take offense to the number of posts, you may even take umbrage at the fact that all my non-AC posts have been in the past day and on one topic. To me, it's called participation.
---
Oh, and by your count, I guess this makes 21 posts in 2 days! Surely I must be paid to do this!
TygerFish,
Thanks for the analysis, and how kind of you to notice. In fact, I am a professional writer, but I am in no way affiliated with Neuros or Digital Innovations except as a happy and paying customer. lol
I happen to think the Neuros is a great product at a great price. I value that they have embraced open source, that there is community development, and that the company participates actively in the user forums. I realize it's not the ideal solution for everybody...the truth is, any player (or any product, for that matter) involves compromise. I would take my Neuros over an iPod any day (for reasons mentioned above, and more). I do enjoy spreading the word about the product. However, I don't think that expressing that this might be a viable alternative for someone looking at MP3 players is necessarily antithetical to the charter of Slashdot.
-Psychopundit
ps: I posted as AC cause I didn't realize I wasn't logged in.
Seriously Fancia, there are a lot of good products out there and the world won't end in fire and brimstone because you choose one over the other. I hope you let us know what you decide on!
Uh... I bought it for what it does now, which is exactly as advertised. I'm confident that the 2.0 stuff will be out shortly, but I didn't buy it for that promise. USB 2.0 is not the be all and end all for me.
Today the device plays oggs, wma, and mp3 files which, coincidentally, are what i have in my collection. It syncs via usb 1.x, which for me is fine. Support is excellent. Firmware is updated. New features are added. Anything else they give is just icing on the cake.
If I bought on the promise of features they would incorporate into the product at some future date and was as unhappy as you are, I would have asked for my money back.
So go ahead, be grumpy. For the price and features, I don't think the neuros can be beaten today, regardless of what they add to it tomorrow.
This is in addition to the promised USB2.0 support. The early adopters
who bought units before July 31 were promised an upgrade that isn't going
to happen
- ever.
There won't be USB2.0 backpacks at all, nor does it look like there'll be upgrades
of any kind for the upgradable backpack. So it's hard not to be
down on the device since it seems to be going downhill.
Uh, have you even bothered to read the forums or even post your concerns?
Have you thought to ask the company? It has been done a number of times, and
answers abound. Hell, the CEO of Neuros posted
regarding
such
rumors
on
Slashdot
just
a week
or so
ago.
Because
you
obviously don't have one, I'll help you find a clue. Go
here and read. That's just one discussion thread on the forums. There are
many many more you can find. So, perhaps you can be a little more productive
then spreading FUD...but given your sour nature, I seriously doubt it.
I'd tell you here that the USB 2.0 units are currently in beta, but you could
read for yourself. Hell, you don't even have to read that carefully to see
how far off base you are. 2.0 upgrades for early adopters are going to happen
regardless of how much you want to spread the rumor that they will not.
From the forum discussion referenced above:
As Jeff said, the Neuros is certainly not toast, in fact, I'm very excited
about the future of the Neuros. As I've made no secret of we have done some
restructuring, but that it's because we're exiting the business is complete
bunk. We simply needed to make some changes to be more competitive.
I'm using a new USB 2.0 40GB unit as we speak and we're working to release
that to broader production, but it just hasn't passed QA yet. We have a bunch
of new enhancements in the works, smaller, faster, sleeker, etc.
Take my word, there is no investing group, and no plug being pulled, and of
course there are no guarantees of success either. What there is a group of
very passionate folks, from engineers and software developers to customer service
folks working hard on the Neuros to make sure that the product continues to
improve and that brand comes to mean a place customers have the best experience
in the industry. Despite all our mistakes and delays, that hasn't changed,
and I think anyone that works here would agree on that.
Well, each person has different priorities. I just don't want to organize
my music across a slew of CDs. I'd rather dump to a hard drive, organize playlists,
use random shuffle across across artists, albums, or the whole collection,
etc... To me a portable mp3 player with a 20gig hd (minimum) is a better solution.
Perhaps if I already had an in dash CD player that could read MP3's, it wouldn't
have been necessary to move to something like the Neuros.
As far as whether or not 700megs is a big limitation or not...I guess that's
all relative. I have ripped almost 120 gigs of music. For me, 20 gigs can feel
like a limitation at times. Again though, if I already had a way to play my
mp3's in the car, I'd probably be fine.
Well, you may or may not regret the lack of USB 2.0 support very rapidly.
For me, it's a non-issue as I don't move 20 gigs worth of data every couple
of hours. When I got my Neuros, I selected the songs I wanted to upload to
it and left it overnight when I went to sleep. Now I just add and remove a
few albums at a time and for that, usb 1.x is fine. So, this has just been
a non-issue for me. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind having 2.0 support,
but 1.0 isn't as bad for me as it is for somepeople.
As for the vorbis sounding terrible when your vorbis quality rises above 5...well,
I've not had that experience and neither have a bunch of other people. Read
the forums ask the questions, decide for yourself.
You seem pretty down on the Neuros tuffy... I appreciate the fact that they
release beta firmware updates regularly, as they fix bugs and improve quality.
I've never had a problem with a beta update on my Neuros. But if you don't
want to install them, nobody forces you too. Really.
Your conclusion that the lack of updates on the firmware at open.neurosaudio.com
make the whole device incomplete and practically unmaintained is misleading
and dishonest. While you can't get firmware updates at that url, you can select
from a number of Beta and Point Release updates here.
Additionally, Neuros makes pre-beta updates available as well.
Add to this the fact that there are a few open source projects out there supporting
the Neuros, and I start to question how you arrive at your conclusion unless
you ignore the facts.
The source code for the application that handles uploads and downloads to and
from the Neuros is written in Python and is due to be released to the public
tomorrow. As far as I know, this software is Windows only.
However, there is much better software out there for handling this (even if
you are on a windows PC). I recommend the opensource solution available on
SourceForge. It's called Neuros
Database Manipulator, is written in Java, and
it should work in any OS that can run Java applications. It's slick,
fast, and stable. Most people give up on the software that ships with the Neuros
and start using this immediately.
If you want a solution written exclusively for Linux, check out the Positron software. You can read about this from the project sponsors, thos guys at Xiph.
If you have any specific questions about whether it will work on your specific
OS build, I'd read and post to the Neuros
forums. They have a great community
support system, and the company is very much invested in answering questions
as well. So, it's not unusual to get responses from the community, Neuros tech
support, and even the Neuros CEO. Check it out.
So, there are a bunch of options available for ya, even if you aren't on an
x86 computer.
Hmmm... Well, to each his own. I hadn't noticed this to be a problem. In my car I want good sound of course, but I think the bigger problems are attributed to the poor listening environment (engine noise, wind noise, driving distractions, etc...). Any limitations in FM transmission just has not been an issue for me in my car. But, I can see how that might be an annoyance for vehicle audiophiles.
Good luck!
Slashdot Mirror
^^^^ errr, "Fell" = "Dell"
I thought the Inspiron line was only killed off and replaced by Vostro on the Small Business side of Fell. AFAIK, Inspiron is alive and well on Home/Home Office. In fact, they recently introduced an Inspiron line of desktops as well. (The merits of this are another discussion.)
Based on this guy's experience, it looks like they've already killed off one of the Ubuntu Inspiron notebooks (hopefully for something newer). http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/m essage?board.id=sw_linux&thread.id=11156
What cars had pneumatic brakes?
Energy and Synergy? You think that's disgusting? How about a marketing manager type coming into the lab and talking for 45 minutes about how we were all doing a great job, our profits were through the roof, and that we would all be "Value Captured." When he stopped broadcasting and took questions, we all got to find out that "value captured" was a euphamism for "repurposed" which was a euphamism for "outsourced" which itself was a euphamism for us having the privelege of training our indian replacements for 3 months before being let go. Yes this was at HP. 2 years ago.
I fail to see how Hello Kitty is relevant to this world. In fact, the prospect of it ever becoming so is truly frightening.
Uh, have you actually read his book? He's no more a satarist than Al Franken is a conservative.
grrr...preview button...grrr
Well as I tried to explain, I'm a new account, but not a new reader of Slashdot. I was certainly naive in that I didn't realize an informal discussion of mp3 players would call my credibility into question. After all, I'm not recommending firewall settings, kernel mods, or something mission critical. But you are right, there is no way to assess my credibility. And I don't think it's worth anyone's time to continue trying to do so. What I marvel at is the forensics employed to "suggest" that I'm being paid to contribute. A well structured post that conveys to the standards of persuasive writing and employs a diction that is not tired. (Note, I'm paraphrasing the actual words of Tyger...I think that's the general gist of it.) I've been reading slashdot on and off for years, and I don't think that it's all that unusual. Still, it was amusing, frusterating, and surreal all at the same time. I'll continue to post on topics that I am interested in...and this means you'll likely be hearing my views on mp3 players as pertinent articles are posted. I will continue to do so in whatever style I enjoy, and you may continue to suggest I'm in the employ of Neuros. I don't feel a particular need to make myself credible because frankly, I don't think anything I said calls into question my credibility as a user of the Neuros and someone who takes an interest in mp3 players in general. If I was passing myself off as a heart surgeon and suggesting everyone should get a shiny new stent implanted in their artery, I could see the concern. How ironic that it is when my credentials as an average joe get called into question that things take a turn for the surreal. Oh well... till next time, I suppose.
Well, I think if you read the Neuros forums you will get independent confirmation of this fact by users. If that's not enough, you can post a direct question on the forums. I can tell you firsthand that it plays ogg in both configuration. Or you could listen to Starkey (who if it's the same starkey that posts on the forums) is the project manager for the Neuros Database Manipulator http://neurosdbm.sourceforge.net
Thanks for the compliment, I think. But really, I was just trying to participate. I didn't really think that post sounded like an advertisement and I didn't write it with the motivation to help Neuros sell anything. I wrote it because I had some thoughts on the topic at hand and also had an opinion that the Neuros while not perfect, does have some great functionality at a great price.
;P
And please, I wish you'd redact your statement about my grammar being perfect.
Yeah,
/. as on of several industry related sites that open when I start the browser. So naturally, I started reading more slashdot, posting anonymously, and generally following what's going on. I figured that since I was participating, I might as well get an account (especially since /. limits the number of AC posts per day per IP address). Also, it gets tedious to have to manually set article settings (0,Nested, Oldest First) every tiem I want to read a discussion.
/.
Well, there's no proving to you if you already have your minds made up. You are indeed correct that my account is new today (yesterday) and that I've posted less than 20 messages. You might even be curious why that is. Certainly leaping to the conclusion that I'm a paid mole for Digital Innovations/Neuros is one conclusion you could jump to.
However, there is another explanation. Mainly, that I had an account ages ago...I'm talking pre Natalie Portman...pre Hot Grits...pre goatguy...pre VA Linux...pre mod revision...back even before the days when mentioning Slashdot on your resume would get you noticed by brainless HR drones (thankfully, this bit of fluff has gone by the wayside). When I left grad school and got a 9-X job, I first forgot my password, then after time, my account name, eventually I stopped even looking at Slashdot. Thanks to Mozilla/Firebird's tabbed browsing, I have recently been able to set
There you have it. The explanation. No doubt you will find reasons that it is not good enough, fraught with holes, and basically a lame attempt to distract you from uncovering the vast Neuros advertising campaign being perpetrated on
On a related note, it is amusing that your suspicions are so easily raised. What you have here is nothing more than someone who enjoys discourse and wanted to participate on a topic he is knowledgeable about and has an opinion on.
Go ahead and flame me for it, or try to manufacture conspiratorial motivations...but when it comes right down to it, whether you are right or wrong (and you ARE wrong in your assertion), it all amounts to nothing more than twaddle in a hill of beans.
You may not like me participating, you may take offense to the number of posts, you may even take umbrage at the fact that all my non-AC posts have been in the past day and on one topic. To me, it's called participation.
---
Oh, and by your count, I guess this makes 21 posts in 2 days! Surely I must be paid to do this!
Ach, was distracted thinking of the points he was making. YOu are, I believe, correct.
Thanks.
Ach!
Bitten by the Preview bug again!
TygerFish, Thanks for the analysis, and how kind of you to notice. In fact, I am a professional writer, but I am in no way affiliated with Neuros or Digital Innovations except as a happy and paying customer. lol I happen to think the Neuros is a great product at a great price. I value that they have embraced open source, that there is community development, and that the company participates actively in the user forums. I realize it's not the ideal solution for everybody...the truth is, any player (or any product, for that matter) involves compromise. I would take my Neuros over an iPod any day (for reasons mentioned above, and more). I do enjoy spreading the word about the product. However, I don't think that expressing that this might be a viable alternative for someone looking at MP3 players is necessarily antithetical to the charter of Slashdot. -Psychopundit ps: I posted as AC cause I didn't realize I wasn't logged in.
But in the world of geeks, that's irrelevant! ;P
Seriously Fancia, there are a lot of good products out there and the world won't end in fire and brimstone because you choose one over the other. I hope you let us know what you decide on!
Uh... I bought it for what it does now, which is exactly as advertised. I'm confident that the 2.0 stuff will be out shortly, but I didn't buy it for that promise. USB 2.0 is not the be all and end all for me. Today the device plays oggs, wma, and mp3 files which, coincidentally, are what i have in my collection. It syncs via usb 1.x, which for me is fine. Support is excellent. Firmware is updated. New features are added. Anything else they give is just icing on the cake. If I bought on the promise of features they would incorporate into the product at some future date and was as unhappy as you are, I would have asked for my money back. So go ahead, be grumpy. For the price and features, I don't think the neuros can be beaten today, regardless of what they add to it tomorrow.
This is in addition to the promised USB2.0 support. The early adopters who bought units before July 31 were promised an upgrade that isn't going to happen - ever. There won't be USB2.0 backpacks at all, nor does it look like there'll be upgrades of any kind for the upgradable backpack. So it's hard not to be down on the device since it seems to be going downhill.
Uh, have you even bothered to read the forums or even post your concerns? Have you thought to ask the company? It has been done a number of times, and answers abound. Hell, the CEO of Neuros posted regarding such rumors on Slashdot just a week or so ago. Because you obviously don't have one, I'll help you find a clue. Go here and read. That's just one discussion thread on the forums. There are many many more you can find. So, perhaps you can be a little more productive then spreading FUD...but given your sour nature, I seriously doubt it.
I'd tell you here that the USB 2.0 units are currently in beta, but you could read for yourself. Hell, you don't even have to read that carefully to see how far off base you are. 2.0 upgrades for early adopters are going to happen regardless of how much you want to spread the rumor that they will not.
From the forum discussion referenced above:
Well, each person has different priorities. I just don't want to organize my music across a slew of CDs. I'd rather dump to a hard drive, organize playlists, use random shuffle across across artists, albums, or the whole collection, etc... To me a portable mp3 player with a 20gig hd (minimum) is a better solution. Perhaps if I already had an in dash CD player that could read MP3's, it wouldn't have been necessary to move to something like the Neuros.
As far as whether or not 700megs is a big limitation or not...I guess that's all relative. I have ripped almost 120 gigs of music. For me, 20 gigs can feel like a limitation at times. Again though, if I already had a way to play my mp3's in the car, I'd probably be fine.
Well, you may or may not regret the lack of USB 2.0 support very rapidly. For me, it's a non-issue as I don't move 20 gigs worth of data every couple of hours. When I got my Neuros, I selected the songs I wanted to upload to it and left it overnight when I went to sleep. Now I just add and remove a few albums at a time and for that, usb 1.x is fine. So, this has just been a non-issue for me. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind having 2.0 support, but 1.0 isn't as bad for me as it is for somepeople.
As for the vorbis sounding terrible when your vorbis quality rises above 5...well, I've not had that experience and neither have a bunch of other people. Read the forums ask the questions, decide for yourself.
You seem pretty down on the Neuros tuffy... I appreciate the fact that they release beta firmware updates regularly, as they fix bugs and improve quality. I've never had a problem with a beta update on my Neuros. But if you don't want to install them, nobody forces you too. Really.
Your conclusion that the lack of updates on the firmware at open.neurosaudio.com make the whole device incomplete and practically unmaintained is misleading and dishonest. While you can't get firmware updates at that url, you can select from a number of Beta and Point Release updates here. Additionally, Neuros makes pre-beta updates available as well.
Add to this the fact that there are a few open source projects out there supporting the Neuros, and I start to question how you arrive at your conclusion unless you ignore the facts.
The source code for the application that handles uploads and downloads to and from the Neuros is written in Python and is due to be released to the public tomorrow. As far as I know, this software is Windows only.
However, there is much better software out there for handling this (even if you are on a windows PC). I recommend the opensource solution available on SourceForge. It's called Neuros Database Manipulator, is written in Java, and it should work in any OS that can run Java applications. It's slick, fast, and stable. Most people give up on the software that ships with the Neuros and start using this immediately.
If you want a solution written exclusively for Linux, check out the Positron software. You can read about this from the project sponsors, thos guys at Xiph.
If you have any specific questions about whether it will work on your specific OS build, I'd read and post to the Neuros forums. They have a great community support system, and the company is very much invested in answering questions as well. So, it's not unusual to get responses from the community, Neuros tech support, and even the Neuros CEO. Check it out.
So, there are a bunch of options available for ya, even if you aren't on an x86 computer.
Hmmm... Well, to each his own. I hadn't noticed this to be a problem. In my car I want good sound of course, but I think the bigger problems are attributed to the poor listening environment (engine noise, wind noise, driving distractions, etc...). Any limitations in FM transmission just has not been an issue for me in my car. But, I can see how that might be an annoyance for vehicle audiophiles. Good luck!
Have you considered the Neu... Oh never mind.
You can upload/download music to/from the Neuros on just about any platform. Linux is one of these.
Check out the Neuros.