CES 2008: Slacker Portable

So last night I was at this show, and the guys from Slacker were there both showing off their software, and there hardware. I am a big fan of Pandora, and their product looked very similar, so, once I get back to somewhere where I have a high speed internet connection I think I am going to switch over. But their hardware products are amazing.

The Slacker Portable should be released at the end of this month and will come in 3 different versions that only vary by the number of stations you can program into them with the top of the line being 40 stations. They only work on WiFi, for now, but they look amazing. They have a large screen, larger than the iPhone, but the device on whole isn't much larger than an iPhone.

It is black, it has a small bezel that has buttons on it and it has a really nice charging base. They said that over the holidays they've had the units out to some of their more predominant listeners asking for bug feedback and such and they feel that the product will be good to go come the 31st. I talked to the gentleman who seemed to be running the whole operation and he said that they are working on a satellite connection for the slacker and said that he thinks they should have it out sometime this year, but he didn't want to say when because they don't want to release it until its actually ready instead of releasing it an working out the bugs later. The satellite connection would allow you to use your Slacker Portable anywhere instead of just where you have WiFi access.