[John Harrington @ Jan 17th 2006 12:43AM]

Here's the thing --



Sonos isn't for everyone. Neither is Nordstroms. If you just need clothes, go to Sears or Marshalls. If you are good with your hands, you can cobble together clothes by hand, and save money. The Sonos system is like Nordstroms or Saks, it's an amazing elegant system that needs no cobbling together of Airport Expresses, it's simply amazing.



Flame me all you want, but Sonos IS all that they claim to be. If it's not for you, no problem. I've spent near $4k for all my zone players and extra controllers. My wife loves the system, uses it all the time, and not only did she not need to read a manual (it's that intuitive) she didn't have to ask me for any help with using it, she figured it out in less than five minutes. When you're relaxing after a hard days' work, and your wife comes to you saying the speakers connected to the airport don't work, and you have to get up and then find out that there's an IP conflict, and you spend the next hour or so troubleshooting, you'll wish you were just relaxing while she plays XM's 80's on 8 in the kitchen while dinner is getting ready.



Maybe you'd rather buy an Alienware box for $4k, not me. I'd rather spend that money on a whole house system that does exactly what it says it does, and will do far longer than the Alienware box will be around, and my hard-to-get-buy-in-on-my-tech-purchases wife will see that I bought something that she can enjoy too.



I'll be getting this new box because I can add it to my daughter's room, and can stream XM Kids and Disney for Kids in her room, so that not only can she enjoy it, but she'll be less likely to beg for it when we are riding around in the car, where she asks and asks again for XM Kids.



One of the greatest pleasures in my life is watching my two young daughters dancing around to Laurie Bruckner or the Chipmunks song, or whatever XM Kids is playing next. I will happily exchange the price of a few upgrades on my PC for this box so I can have that. And, when they are falling asleep during nap time to their music, I can go into my home office, and without interruption, stream XM Top Tracks to my office speakers and get some work done, muting only my speakers when a client calls on the phone.



So, Thanks Sonos (and XM) for a really great system that makes my whole family happy.



John