b standard

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. :-(