Dell's Digital Jukebox 20 - Music, the Dell Way
by Andrew Ku on June 20, 2004 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
Dell's Digital Jukebox 20 - Interface
The interface for the Dell DJ, as far as we can tell, comes from Creative. It looks so much like the interface of the Creative's Jukebox that we don't see a noticeable difference other than layout.|
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When the DJ first starts, the selected music screen pops up. The previous selected music tracks are immediately displayed. If the DJ was shut down while music is still playing, the DJ will play the music where it left off and the screen will switch to the Now Playing screen after a few seconds. If there are multiple tracks selected for playing, the headphone icon that is to the left of the track will indicate the playing track.
The Now Playing screen displays the track name, album name, and artist name, with the battery life displayed in the upper left hand corner. Since we have only one track in our selected music, we get the "1 of 1" text in the lower left hand corner. The line below this text is the track slider, which shows the position of the current audio playback, and below this is the time elapsed and time remaining. While we have selected the equalizer rock setting, only the letters, "EQ", are displayed in the upper right hand corner to indicate that the equalizer is set by the user.
Missing from the DJ was the one-touch ability to play a song. The "play all music tracks" function was as close to the one-touch that we could get, but this still requires the user to navigate to the music library first. The lack of a one-touch function makes things a bit more complicated, but on the other hand, the double-clicking does give you more control over track options. Assuming you already have already selected music, however, hitting the play button can act as a one touch button to play songs, but it will be limited to only what you have already selected previously.
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The home button brings you to the main menu, which can be navigated by the scroll dial. Pressing in the scroll dial acts as the enter command, and selects the desired sub-menu. In the music library, the music is sorted based on albums, artists, and genre for faster track selection.
If an entry (artist, track, or genre) is too long for the window to display, the text will scroll slowly from right to left and then back again in a continuous loop to display the name.
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When the scroll dial is used to select an entry in the playlists, albums, artists, and genre sub-menus, another menu pops up offering four options: play, view tracks, add to selected, and delete x ("x" being either album, artist, or genre depending on which sub-menu you have entered).
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All four sub-menus plus all the tracks sub-menu have a Find Track option as the first entry. Selecting it with the scroll dial pops up a small alphabet window, which is suppose to help navigate to the right entry. Because the alphabet window has only the 26 letters plus the space object, whole words or phases cannot be formed.
Selecting an individual track brings up the same sub-menu when you select any entry. The only difference is that the delete option is for the track alone and that the view tracks option changes to view track details. Selecting the option to view track details shows the track name, artist, album, genre, duration, bit rate, and sample rate.
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Dell's Digital Jukebox 20 – Under the Hood (continued)
Dell's Digital Jukebox 20 – Interface (continued)
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gettinbranded2003 - Wednesday, June 23, 2004 - link
I question the timing of this review...Dell will be releasing a new version of the DJ later this summer.EdvardGrieg - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
I agree, it is getting annoying in the 'final' words that Andrew is claiming that nothing is better than the iPod, when he hasn't really tested anything that would seriously challenge the iPod (ie iRiver and Rio). Further, he seems to dismiss both companies as not even existing. I believe that the Karma had the second highest sales last quarter, right behind the iPod, and iRiver definetely does huge business (moreso on the flash side i believe), but their HD units are still top notch.I hope that Andrew has some of these other units on the way as well.
P.S. hohoho: it's just Rio Karma, no more 'sonic' Rio is actually now part of D&M holdings...yeah, that would be Denon and Marantz :-D
cdamion - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
Hello
I bought 2 weeks ago what to my knowledge is the World's smallest MP3 Player with a 20Gb USB2 Hard Drive and with Photo Wallet function.
It's a lot smaller than the iPOD and any other Hard Drive MP3 Player I know. I'm using it extensively and I love it.
Advise a Review of it: Archos Gmini 220.
cabal427 - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
I currently own the DJ 20 and it's great!It should also be noted that through the firmware/driver updates it is possible to now store ANY type of file in data mode as well as to copy the data/music to and from the DJ onto any computer.
http://support.dell.com/FileLib/Type.aspx?c=us&...
Another nice thing w/ the DJ is that because it's based upon the Creative Zen the linux drivers for the Zen also work w/ the DJ and you can access it as a removeable filesystem from within most of the Linux Distros.
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/mess...
hohoho - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
Sorry, I should have been more specific. I meant it would be nice to see more reviews of mp3 players that are directly competing with the Ipod with similar credientials. By this, I mean the Creative Labs NOMAD Jukebox Zen, Creative Touch, Sonic Rio Karma 20, iRiver IHP 20/40 GB, Pogo Ripdrive, etc. This is why I was pleased with the Dell Jukebox review since it was part of that competitor group. Most of the other reviews, with the obvious exception of the Apple Ipod have dealt with the dumbed down micro MP3 players which most people aren't in the market for as much as Ipod style players. At least for most computer junkies :)nord1899 - Sunday, June 20, 2004 - link
Why not also review the Rio Karma or the iRiver iHP-120/140?Having just upgraded from a Nomad 3 JB to the iHP-140, I doubt I will ever use a Creative product again. Also the iRiver is significantly cheaper than the iPod. The Rio Karma has also gotten rave reviews elsewhere.
The iPod is not the only player out there you know.
Oxonium - Sunday, June 20, 2004 - link
A good review but I would have like to have seen some side-by-side photos of the Jukebax next to an iPod. Since people who look at the Jukebox will likely cross-shop an iPod, it would be nice to have seen this.Wesley Fink - Sunday, June 20, 2004 - link
hohoho -Andrew has been doing MP3 player reviews for quite a while. If you click the audio tab at the start of the page you will find many of the reveiws you requested have already been done.
DaCode - Sunday, June 20, 2004 - link
If, like you say, the interface is Creative's, you may want to take a look at a tool I once found for a friend with a Nomad 2.It enables transfer of files from AND TO the pc.
In 'My Computer' you don't only see the device butr als 'The Jukebox' (with the songs) as a usable harddisk.
It's called NotMad Explorer :
http://www.redchairsoftware.com/notmad/
Maybe nice to add to the test
hohoho - Sunday, June 20, 2004 - link
It's nice to see an Mp3 player review at Anand. Any chance we will be getting any more of these reviews? I'd be interested to see how the Iriver, Rio and Creative stack up against each other, and I'd also like to see what's so amazing about the Apple Ipod that puts it above the rest in the game. There aren't many decent sites to find good MP3 Player reviews as the one given here.