3. In Use

• ZP80 ZonePlayer
• • Electronics-Expo.com
  • $288.88

Hooking up the system was straightforward. It was just a matter of connecting the audio cables, the network cable, plugging it in and installing the supplied software on my iBook. Figure 3 is an installation-process screenshot taken when my first ZP80 was discovered on the LAN and was being assigned a name.

Figure 3: Setting the Player Name

I did not know how the ZP80 would find my music, but that question was answered when I got to the music selection screen (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Selecting the SMB Server

Evidently, the ZP80 could play music from SMB (or CIFS) network file systems. SMB file system support is found in almost all modern computer systems, so every computer on the LAN should be able to supply music to the ZP80. The idea is that you would set up a directory with your music files and then share that directory for the ZP80. The installation software did this for me on my iBook, but for other network devices, such as a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, you would need to set up the sharing yourself and then tell the device about it.