We speculated that the hardware device had to launch pretty soon. The holiday season is coming, after all. Today the Slacker portable music player is available for pre-order. Shipments will begin in early December. The company also announced the premium version of the Slacker music service, which not have the images ads, and will allow you more freedom to skip any song (not just 5 per hour) and replay songs — a licensing limitation from the music labels.

You can get your music anywhere, because the device has a built-in satellite receiver. You can also connect through WiFi if you’ve got a network available. The capacities are 2Gig ($200), 4Gig ($250), and 8Gig ($300). Many will expect the 4-inch screen to be a touch screen, but it isn’t. There is a touch strip along the left hand side, and a scroll wheel. With a screen that large, you might also expect it to play video but it doesn’t.

It’s a very crowded market these days with Apple shipping it’s new iPod Touch (which is exactly like an iPhone without the phone), and the new 2nd generation of Zune hardware launching as well. It will be interesting to see what shakes out this holiday season!

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