Slacker Portable

Slacker's service offers free music, contoured to your tastes, with some catches (no rewinding, and limited skipping, for instance). A premium service, available for $7.50 per month, offers unlimited skips and other upgrades, but having it isn't necessary for enjoying the player.

Despite being an excellent concept, the Slacker Portable is hindered by buggy software and a touch strip control that can be a nightmare to use (fortunately, you can disable it). I'd give it an A+ for concept and a B- for execution making it a slightly better effort than Haier's Ibiza Rhapsody.

Both devices are for patient early adopters only, but make no mistake. The Ibiza Rhapsody and the Slacker Portable are surely blueprints for future PMPs other than iPods. The player comes in three flash memory capacities: 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB (we tested the 4GB version).

Most of that storage is reserved for Slacker files respectively, each capacity can store up to 15, 25, or 40 personalized "stations," leaving only 500MB, 1.5GB, or 4GB for "personal files" specifically, your MP3s and WMAs.

Audio codec support is weak Clearly, the device was designed primarily for listening to Slacker files (which happen to be AAC Pro V2).

The biggest surprise is that, despite the huge 4 inch, 480 by 272 pixels LCD, the device doesn't play videos or display photos.

Large for a personal media player (2.8 by 4.2 by 0.7 inches HWD 4.6 ounces), the Slacker Portable features the aforementioned 4-inch screen and an odd touch strip control that runs along the left hand edge of the display. The included headphones are branded with Slacker's cool tattoo like logo, but that's about all there is to love about them.

But that's my advice with almost every PMP. The player also has a mini USB port (it comes with a cable) for PC connection and charging, a USB charging adapter, a USB cable, and a canvas carrying case, which also features that cool logo.

The controls on the right panel are, top to bottom, a home button, a scroll wheel enter button, skip forward, play or pause, and a power hold button. The left hand panel houses the USB port, along with a proprietary connection for Slacker specific car and home docks (not included and not yet available), and, more important, a heart shaped favorites button and a ban button.

Banning a tune ensures that you'll never hear it again likewise, "hearting" a song lets Slacker know you like that selection.