Customer Reviews:
 I love it... November 15, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I love this gadget - and let's be honest, at the end of the day it's an expensive alarm clock, with some features that move it into the gadget arena. I doubt I would have bought a digital photo frame for it's own sake, but this had instant appeal. It does look fantastic, and it does what alarm clocks should do...with a load of style.
I agree with some of the ealier niggles - the inability to select your own wake up music being the biggest downer for me.
But I've had mine for two months now, and I still get a kick out of looking at it ! Kind of makes waking up a pleasure !!!
 Nice hardware, poor software October 20, 2007
38 out of 42 found this review helpful
A previous reviewer pretty much pegged it: stylish hardware, nice screen, nothing else I've seen quite like it at this price point. But oh, where did they go to get the software??? Imagine: file names with only the first six characters displayed; no effective way to navigate among (thousands of) music or picture files; white borders on the sides of standard 4:3 ratio pictures contrasting glaringly with the glossy black frame; or, use the 16:9 screen format and just not show people's heads; no slide show in Clock mode and no way to permanently replace the default picture that someone at Philips at least seems to like; and then there's the randomizer that doesn't really seem to. The operation of the unit isn't exactly intuitive either, and the documentation doesn't cover all features. They could easily fix most of the shortcomings in a software update, but remarkably enough the Philips website doesn't have a way for you to submit suggestions or complaints (that's a 'future'). A great pity, because they almost got it right on this one.
Very nice alarm clock October 15, 2007
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
There's much to like about this clock. For those who have not seen one in person - it's more like a digital picture frame that also shows time - very cool concept. There are only two things that I'm upset about. First - low resolution. To the point that you almost do not want to use it as a picture frame. What were they thinking??? Pictures look horrid when viewed full screen from a short distance. Another reviewer posted resolution numbers as 480 x 234 - I couldn't find any numbers in the manual, but I can't believe for $130 they didn't do better than that. Second - the background selection is only 4 colors - red, blue, green and purple. I do not like any of them. At least they could've included black background - I could live with that. All in all - I like it a lot, but the low resolution of the LCD screen is very upsetting.
 One Fatal Flaw September 21, 2007
33 out of 41 found this review helpful
It is a great idea, but has one fatal flaw: when displaying the clock, it cannot show a slide show for the picture by the clock.
You can use it for a slideshow frame, you can use it for an alarm clock, but you cannot use it for an alarm clock with a slideshow.
I returned it as a result of this.
Toying with perfection September 18, 2007
117 out of 119 found this review helpful
There is a lot to love about this product. It's sleek. It's stylish. It's bright, bold and clear. (It can be dimmed!) It's a clock-radio with two independent alarms that also plays audio files (.mp3 and .wma), video (mpeg4 and divx codices) and photo slide shows (.jpg only). It has built-in "relaxation" sounds to help you fall asleep. It has so much going for it! And just when you think it can't get any better...
It doesn't get better. It slips a little. You start thinking to yourself, "If only..." and "Why didn't they just take the next step?" Why isn't there a tiny bit of built-in memory so that I don't need a SD card or USB stick to be attached to change the cute-but-becoming-annoying default photo? Why can't I select an audio file on the SD or USB as my alarm music? Why only three built-in sounds for the "relaxation" music? Why isn't there an AM tuner? Why isn't there a headphone jack? Why can I only display JPEG-format images? For a widescreen 7" LCD picture frame, why is the resolution only 480 x 234? Why isn't there a back-up battery?
This is such a near-perfect little gadget that it's painful to see how close Philips came to making the best device on the market. Yet despite these flaws, it is still so wonderful that it demands four stars. Lucky for Philips, there don't seem to be any viable alternatives with all of the features it does have at this price point... yet.
And regarding the day-of-the-week issue: Philips posted a firmware update on their Web site on September 14, 2007, that fixes this issue. Visit the Philips Web site, type in "AJL308" to find the product page, select the Support link tab (just above and to the right of the product image), and scroll down to the Software section. There is a PDF read-me file and a ZIP file with the actual firmware update. Read the PDF and carefully follow its directions to update the firmware. You'll need a USB drive to transfer the firmware update to your AJL308, and it takes several minutes to complete the update, but once it's done the day of the week should be correct.
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