Linksys WMLS11B Wireless-B Music System

Rating:
Summary: Awesome Idea, Poorly Executed
Review: Believe me, I wanted this to turn out to be an awesome product. However, in its out-of-box state, it was mediocre at best. I have a desktop and a laptop in my home network connected via Linksys Wireless-B WAP and Router (BEFW11S4). Both have MusicMatch Plus, and my WMLS11B is networked via wi-fi. Out of the box, I immediately noticed spotty performance in streaming music from my library. The playback would regularly interrupt so that the system could buffer the file, and it got really annoying, so I upgraded the firmware as soon as the next version was released. Now the mid-song buffer issue seems to be resolved, however the more i used it, the more flaws I noticed.
1) There is no way to page thru artists/albums/songs when browsing. There is no search feature. You are limited to scrolling one by one alphabetically until you find the item you want. Have a large music library? You're screwed.
2) There is no way to view the contents of a playlist. If you want to play a specific song from a playlist, you have to leave the playlist and browse to it via artist/album/genre.
3) Screen response is slow. This makes scrolling through your library tough because you inevitably hit the down button too many times and scroll too far.
4) This is the big one: If you try to play a playlist that contains more than 100 songs, this piece of $#!t only buffers the first 10 songs, and plays them over and over again.
5) There's no way to create playlists on the fly.
6) Upgrading the firmware is only possible with an ethernet connection. If you have your WMLS11B set up wirelessly and nowhere near your router like I do, this makes upgrading a huge pain.

I feel there's a lot they can do to improve this thing. I'm not so fed up that I'll return it yet, but seriously this thing makes my Walkman look like an iPod.

Rating:
Summary: good idea, well made, poor programing
Review: I felt this was a rather unique product. I chose to buy the unit instead of putting together a small form factor mp3 server. I had a hunch the software was going to suck and the firmware would be sketchy and I was right. However the design is solid and feels well made its not extremely loud but then again its not very big either. You wouldnt have to be an A/V wizard to swap the speakers or hook this to your stereo. I pray they release new firmware and patches to enable the mp3 play list feature to take advantage of other software suites. Music match jukebox makes me sick to use and doesn't seem to be very reliable. My unit seems to reboot itself after about 3 sequential commands. If you're a station flipper like I am it can be fairly annoying. The Internet radio feature does work without subscribing to music match but its hard to browse the stations, there are just too many, some do not work or are dead air. I also found my college radios station on the list which was a surprise, wkdu - Drexel University, Philadelphia. The list is very extensive but with it being free, don't expect the same music that's on FM radio without subscribing to the service. This product has potential but out of the box it's a little bit disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: Good product - I'm enjoying it
Review: I just got the Wirless-B Music System. I have just installed the Linksys wireless system- the WRT54GS router and the WPS54GU2 Print Server. Everything works great so far. The WMLS11B Music system set up easily and works. I have the Rhapsody music service - I just had to turn on UnPnP in both Windows XP Professional and in Rhapsody. The Music System sounds great, I have hooked it up to my stereo system downstairs and it sounds even better. I get good reception in my backyard and anywhere around my house. It will play and entire album if I select the album and play it, not individual songs. I can advance to the next song using the next button if I wish. My only beefs are the menus respond slowly (kind of like those first generation satellite boxes), you cannot get to an artist directly, you have to scroll. My way around this is to load a playlist with the artists I want and make sure it comes up immediately by callin it A A A Main Playlist (first in alphabetical order. A first of it's kind unit but it is fun and works well

Rating:
Summary: Great idea, poor execution. Wait for next iteration.
Review: MY BACKGROUND:
I have always been an ardent musicphile and have subsequently grown a respectable collection of music. With a little less than 1000 CDs, physically finding the music you feel like listening to was always a chore (although there is much to be said for spending some quality time rediscovering that CD that you forgot you had). SO, I jumped on the MP3 bandwagon a couple of years ago, ripping my entire collection (up yours RIAA) onto my server. Having them on my server has made it easy to listen to whatever I like pretty much anywhere in the house where there's a computer (both son's rooms, living room, my office). I converted to iTunes recently when it became available for the PC (much nicer to synch the iPod with than MusicMatch ). BTW, I'm a software engineer and gadget freak, which explains why my house is wired with CAT6 cabling and why even my 3 year old son's computer is running at Gigabit speeds on our home network. :-)

Okay, enough babbling, onto the review:
WHY I BOUGHT IT-
I'd been toying with the idea of picking up one of the portable media players ever since they came out a year or so ago. I couldn't justify spending the cash on the designs that were out there until I found the Linksys WMLS11B. It is very aesthetically pleasing, but more importantly, it has a very nice (and large for the form factor) LCD screen and looks basically like a boombox that can play all your MP3s. Whenever I can (when the weather and family allow) I try to work from my deck or screened-in porch. I'm somewhat tired of having the iPod earbuds sticking in my ears and plugging a pair of powered computer speakers into the iPod is a hassle.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS-
For $180 ($250+ MSRP) I expected something a bit more substantial. It's not badly constructed, but seems too 'plasticky' and lightweight for the cost. Anyway, after about ten minutes, I had it configured and working on my wireless network (Linksys 802.11g). Incidentally, you need to set it up with an ethernet connection to set it up initially, but I could not get it to connect to any of my computers directly and had to finally just plug it into a router. The very first impression was that I had messed something up with the wiring because I had to have the volume all the way up to hear the music. After goofing around with everything, I decided that it was set up correctly, but just lacked the power to play adequately in anything else except an absolutely quiet room (with the sound level at MEDIUM, you can barely hear noise coming from the speakers).

PROS -
-Nice to look at
-Sound quality is pretty good once you hook up some nicer powered speakers
-Easy to set up
-Fairly compact
-Fair selection of internet radio stations

CONS -
-The included speakers leave a lot to be desired
-Must use MusicMatch (it sucks!!) or Rhapsody (a RealOne company, which if you didn't know, is run by Satan)
-For some reason, I can't get it to play more than ten songs from a playlist.
-The interface is HORRIBLE! Very non-intuitive and I spend more time scrolling through my collection than actually listenting to music. Most frustrating is that after you scroll down for a couple of MINUTES and find 'Modest Mouse', if you change your mind and decide you want to listen to 'Menomena' instead, the interface tosses you back to the top-most menu, meaning that you have to select 'BROWSE' then select 'ARTIST/ALBUM' then scroll down for several more minutes to get back to the M's.... Even a submenu that allowed you to scroll through the alphabet and select, say, 'M' and then browse all the M's would be VERY nice. If the playlist function worked properly, then you could invest some time and set up your favorite songs and/or artists, but for spontaneously searching through your catalog... uhh, you won't.
-For some reason, I occasionally lose signal with my network and it can't find the server (even though I have my laptop receiving 54Mbps with excellent signal strength right next to it). Not a frequent occurence, just puzzling.
-Being 802.11b based, it only supports WEP and not WPA.:-(
-No carry handle
-The remote is pretty good, but doesn't work unless pointed directly at the unit and from within a very shallow angle from center.
-No headphone jack on the front
-Too many cables sticking out of the back. Cable management is so easy, yet apparently an alien concept to most manufacturers.

CONCLUSIONS:
It's just frustrating to have something soooo close to being good, but having some poor design muck it up. I really wish they'd assign it a more iPod-like interface (where you can use the back button to go to your previous menu level and selection). I also wish they'd find some way to tap into iTunes as a server or roll their own (okay, I can dream). I believe that if Linksys were to revamp the interface firmware and take care of some of the problems with the 'music server', it would be worthwhile. Unfortunately, I've dealt with Linksys for too long to even hope that they'd bother to update this version. They will instead release a newer, improved version which will make this model the MP3 Edsel.
I'm going to return this to the store today as I have a 10 day 'remorse period' that expires on Monday.
Nice try Linksys, better luck next time. :-(

Rating:
Summary: Great Product!
Review: This thing is GREAT! I purchased a SqueezeBox about a month ago and spent 10+ hours trying to get it working (I'm an IT guy so it's not that I didn't understand the technology). Long story short - I never got it working, so I sent it back and decided to buy a Linksys WMLS11B despite the less than enthusiastic reviews. Well I'm happy to report that I received it last night and had it up and running 15 minutes after I opened the box. I listened to Rhapsody streams for over 4 hours and couldn't be more pleased with the sound quality (I have it connected to my receiver). I found the interface to be very intuitive and everything worked as expected. The only time the device lost a connection was when I crank up the microwave (must be on a similar frequency). Once the microwave is done nuking - the music picks up where it left off. Again, from my experience this is a great product!