I'm going to try out JReceiver as a last ditch effort.

Just some counterpoints:

mmhere123456: Yeah, the amp is a big deal for some locations. But i need this for my living room, which has everything hooked up through an amp anyway, so it's not a problem in my case. As for it being more DIY than the Rio... i've played with and handled both, and the Rio actually feels WAY more cheap and less refined that the Slimp3. The software for the Slimp3 is actively being updated, and there are a number of damn cool plugins available for it, since it's all Perl scriptable. It's not a kit, check out the site for details. It's more refined than you think.

julf: Yup. That's the other biggy... it's all decoded by an mp3 chip on the hardware side. They do have it recoding to mp3 from OGG and AAC (i think) on the fly if you are running it from a linux server at the moment. Slick, but lossy and task intensive. Big negative though. But, i don't see myself ever re-encoding my whole collection to anything other than mp3 in the near future.

As for the user interface... have you ever used one? I'd have to disagree with you on this point. It is SLICK, and FAST. It does just about everything the empeg does on top of it. Search by anything, Shuffle by anything, and Artist->Album menu selection. I've used it and IMHO it's way more usable than the Rio. The only percievable negative is that you have to use the remote. But that is offset by the fact that it has a slick web interface... perfect for the Audrey sitting next to my couch.

Keep 'em coming... i really don't wanna spend the $250 on it but i'm just really fed up. =]