[slinkelist] newbie notes

[Mike Macgirvin]

I just recently got cdj and slinke running last week and overall I'm
very pleased with the combo - especially given the pathetic user
interface of the Sony CX450.

I've also looked at recent mailing list archives, so I know that this is
a product in active development and things are changing. As a first time
user, I wanted to point out a few areas that could benefit from just a
bit of enhancement.

1. Saving window layouts. Every time I start it up I've got to drag the
artist/title columns wide enough to read. 

2. Ability to play directly without adding to a playlist. I notice that
this feature apparently once existed but not in the recent code.

3. The help files say you can import mp3's by dragging them into the
library. I did this with 150 selected files and got back 150 error
messages (separated by a few seconds each) telling me I needed to drop
them into an album, not a CD. No way to stop/cancel. Now that I know I
won't do it that way again, but changing the help text (create an album
first, then drag onto the album) could save some grief and a lot of
time. Or allow a cancel-all at the point the error first comes up. Or
would it be too difficult for the software to just create an album and
drop them in?  --- I also tried to drag a file system folder containing
MP3's and wasn't allowed (folder file type unsupported). Seems the
folder could make an easy named album _if_ auto-create happened.

4. A bit concerned about database reliability. Once when I restarted,
there were empty slots where they had previously been found and
identified. Scanning again found them and didn't have to go out to CDDB
to name them. But the concern is because I had about thirty or so CD's
which weren't in CDDB and I've now typed them all in by hand and fixed
some CDDB entries that were wrong. I don't wish to do it again. Options
could be to backup the DB (which I did manually), and/or allow
import/export to text files.

5. As noted by others the upload of text to the CX-450 seems to be
missing stuff. This may be a player limitation. Why on earth they would
limit a 400-CD player to 200 artist names is beyond me; unless they just
reused firmware from the CX-200. Half my collection is "various artists"
so I think I've got about 1000 total. But the song names seem to be
missing - all I get is album name on the player.

6. Long term enhancement - it would be nice to see "What's Playing"
queryable from a remote computer or device. I'm piping music all over
the house. If it were just dumped to a text file I could work with it.
Added points for "What's Next" in the cases where that's known, but I
understand how hard that one could be.

None of these are critical issues except perhaps the DB reliability, and
I can work around or live with all of them. This is mostly just a note
so that the developers can tabulate what irks the most people the most
and prioritize accordingly. 

I'm quite happy with this product overall and would like to praise the
developers for such a painless installation. Getting strange hardware
and software to communicate is usually quite a daunting task and the
installation went very smoothly and everything worked pretty much as
expected the first time.