Bob, Welcome!

I'll answer as much as I can!

1) The 15 hours battery life is something I certainly found with real life use. Of course, the battery life will decrease if you connect often. The Wi-Fi is turned off until you initiate a connection, so it does not use any battery power unless you want it to.

2) I created a new station based off music from Cannonball Adderley. The first 10 artists it thinks are similar are:

Grant Green, Gene Ammons, Johnny "Hammond" Smith, Ike Quebec, Stanley Turretine, Eddie Harris, Jimmy Forrest,Big John Patton, Richard "Groove" Holmes.

Sadly I know nothing about those artists, so I can't say whether the results will satisfy you. They have 91 tracks by Cannonball Adderley in their collection.

Whether you hear the same artist over and over again depends on how you tweaked the station. I've created several custom stations that have played nothing but unique songs for over a week.

3)It is pretty simple to operate the player without looking at it, as long as you keep to the play/pause,ban/favorite buttons. If you need to change a station, you'll have to look at the screen. All controls are perfectly accessible when the player is in the case.

4) I agree that a 30 day (or longer) trial of the premium service would be nice to include with the player. Sadly that isn't the case. When I played with the non-premium version, I only heard an ad once or twice an hour, and I only ever heard ad's for Slacker Premium so I can't comment on other commercials.

5) It is simple to connect the player to your stereo, I did the same at home (and in the car) and as long as you keep the volume to a reasonable level, there is no distortion at all.

Hope this helps a little, I'd suggest checking out the web player at slacker.com (free) and seeing whether their music collection suits your needs. It certainly did with me.

Please feel free to comment more if you have any other questions!

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