I bought a Squeezebox 3 a couple of weeks ago, so I'm a complete Squeezebox newby, but I am completely besotted by it; I just love it.
Although I work in IT (I run the computers in a company with 60 workstations and four servers) I didn't find the set up at all straightforward. I had to remove and re-install SlimServer because the first time it didn't start and run. I never got the SB to pick up an IP address by DCHP, and in the end installed a fixed address. I think the instructions are a bit minimal. When you are installing they keep telling you to press the right arrow on the remote, and when the SB didn't get an IP address, I was a bit slow to realise that other arrows did things, and that is how I found by chance how to install a fixed IP address. When I first tried to switch the SB on the display said something like 'Connecting to SlimServer....' and then went dark. It didn't say 'SlimServer not found', for example. Then when I looked at the DHCP server's client list I saw that the SB wasn't on it, so of course it couldn't work.
It comes with some Internet radio stations already available, but most of these I hadn't heard of and consequently wasn't intested in, as I was keen to set up certain other foreign radio stations. I ended up going to the SB forums, which are brilliant, and someone told me how to do it. It depends on entering at the SlimServer the URL for the radio feed. The first one I found in the forums didn't work, a second one did.
When I was doing this I thought 'when I get this straight and know how to do it, I'll set myself up as a SB intaller/consultant, there's bound to be demand'.
It's hard for me to imagine how a person with no IT aptitude and no netwoking skills could get through it. I know I did plenty of IPCONFIGing and PINGing, etc, finding out the status of the network, and what was talking to what, etc.
I now have it running on Ethernet, and my next stage is to get it onto wireless (I finally accepted that the wi-fi router I have is rubbish, and have ordered another one). I have ordered two 320 Gb hard discs that I shall put in my server and keep synchronised as a backup system.
Yesterday I ripped a classical vocal CD to FLAC, MP3 320bps and I shall over the next few weeks hear how these two formats through the SB compare to the CD playing on my Shanling CD player. I shall add Ogg to FLAC and MP3, as I prefer to use open source when I can. I note that MP3 320bps is roughly half the file size of FLAC and on first listen sounds good.
I use CDEX to rip, and the Lame/MP3 options in it are a nightmare, and I don't at this stage understand them. Ogg is a bit easier.
I am new to working with music files, and I find there is quite a learning curve learning about Ogg/MP3/FLAC (I ignore iTunes) and tags (tag versions are complicated), etc.
The SB is a very cool piece of equipment. I particularly like the slick way the display works. I have the Spectrum Analyser 'screen saver', and I love the way a banner smoothly slides in from the right every 30 seconds or so to remind you what you are listening to, and then cooly slides off to the right. It is very aesthetically pleasing and well done.
Edit on 15th May 2007: I just came across my post, now quite old. I have now given up on wireless networking in my home, and I still have an Ethernet cable trailing down the stairs from my slim server upstairs to my Squeezebox in my sitting room. I never got my wireless SB3 to connect wirelessly, although my laptop and slim server would talk to each other wirelessly. However, I always found wireless networking to be more trouble and less reliable than Ethernet, and got fed up after coming home in the evening to pay a few bills online, and ending up wasting most of the time getting the network working again; or I would start a biggish download and it would stop in the middle and time out. My experience is that Ethernet just works, like water and electricity, but wireless networking is trouble.
After wireless I tried homeplugs - adaptors that plug into power sockets and provide networking over the mains. I read many encouraging reports of them. I bought three, and put them in and they worked straight away. I left music playing on my SB and went into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, and ten minutes later the music stopped. I went to the slim server and it was no longer connecting to the network. I sold the homeplugs.
All this of course is about networking, not about the Squeezebox. I stilll love my Squeezbox, and wouldn't go back, but I do think that a Squeezebox isn't something you just take home and plug in, like a toaster. I can't imagine how a person with no networking and IT experience or aptitude would get on with it.