If you're lets say in an airport or just plainly have powered off your desktop at home, would you really want to ask the x place's personnell to hook up your Pandora into an usb port or fire up your box just for charging your Pandora? Simly, no. The 5-10$ lower price (well isn't gonna happen anyway) just doesn't compensate situations like these. Nice topic though. Got a lot of respones.