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You might find them better or more suitable than the dedicated controller and opt to get only the receiver.

Yes, I'm still kicking myself for not picking up a duet or two for $160. The controller gets mixed reviews, and one thing I like about the Boom as that so far it has worked without any issues what so ever.

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They should have built in a CD player and maybe even a cassette tape player, though. I can't imagine it would have cost much more, and it would be nice to have a device that would do it all.

It's 13"W x 5"H x 3.1"D, so a CD player would add over two inches to the depth, and would probably be wasted on 90% of the userbase. It does have an aux jack, so you could could hook up a portable.

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but it's slow going at best.

Have you considered a Central? My mother successfully uses hers on a daily basis once we got over over a rough start that involved a dead hard drive followed by a colony of ants trying to build a colony next to the nice warm replacement drive. The real downside is a lack of interconectivity with the modern mp3 playing world.

Matthew