Too expensive... Hmm, expensive relative to what? Is Audi A8 too expensive compared to Neon? If you need something to bring your groceries in, yes. If you need sometning to travel 500 miles a day without noticing and will last for 20 years, no. How large the target population is for which it is affordable is entirely different question. Saying 'it is too expensive' and 'I cannot afford it' are two quite different things. (I cannot afford Audi...)

Too late... Just how late can the first product in a class be? Aiwa you are mentioning does not compare, like 3-CD home changer does not compare to 3x300 Sony system. This does not mean, of course, that one cannot decide that the former is good enough, for the price.

You would be surprised how many people here are not Linux geeks, or geeks at all. The main empeg selling points are capability to hold your entire music collection and upgradeability. You say you will eBay Aiwa when it becomes obsolete? Why would anyone want to buy it then? We are getting WAV and M$ format suport in few weeks. If Ogg Vorbis takes of, we will have that, too. Likewise for losless compression algorithms if they achieve anything worthwhile (they are around 30%-40% space saving now). Interfacing with GPS, engine management and your granny's pacemaker is cool, but entirely peripheral.

The (announced) product that might start to aproach status of lower-cost (and lower capability) competition is PhatNoise - I recomend that you read about them on this BBS and their site before you decide. They basically emulate CD-changer with a hard disk based unit. Then again, they seem to have a number of problems and will cost more than half the empeg cost. (BTW, empeg guys did design of a similar product for an unspecified customer - not this one, PhatNoise is not designed well enough to be their child ).

Finally, don't look at empeg as a mass-market product. It will never be that, and was never intended to be. These guys earn most of daily bread designing cool stuff for 'big boys' - like Rio Receiver also sold by Dell. empeg-car is their flagship, something to say 'see what we can do'.

So, I urge you to consider all factors again. If Aiwa again ends up the winner, well, enjoy it!

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green