1. No emplode/other managing software
Well, I am not about to trade my empeg for one, but I have to say that not haveing to rely on something like emplode is actually a huge advantage.

While I agree that I would be happy with a unit that does not need a software like emplode, I can´t see a way to handle this amount of sound files without a descent managing software.

These types of devices are basically large hard drives that happen to have built in mp3 decoding. The more you can treat it like a bare drive the better. I think the ideal compliment to emplode would be a USB mounter that allowed you to treat the empeg like a USB hard drive (and automagically created the appropriate FIDS and database entries as you copied songs to it). Ideally the empeg could emulate a generic USB storage device and no driver would even be necessary for most operating systems. You could plug your empeg into just about any computer withouth extra software and copy music to it. I wonder if you could do this and make it 'write only' to keep the RIAA happy?

I guess this would solve the problems with almost any operating system. However, I don´t see how you could realize the current functionality of storing only one playlist/song no matter how often it is referenced by other playlists. There are simply limitations in that approach that might or might not outweight the limitations emplode implies on us.


cu,
sven
(MkII 12GB blue, #080000113)