I am looking forward to joining the empeg/rio community. The support for the empeg / Rio Car demonstrated by Hugo and Rob from empeg, Tim E. at Sonic Blue, Tony F. and everyone else who has contributed to the empeg community, is impressive.

I ordered the "instock" Rio Car from the Sonic Blue online store on March 2nd. After three business days, I called about shipping details for my "completed - priority 10:30 next day" order on March 6th. I had to re-order my Rio Car for reasons unexplained over the phone. Even after "re-ordering" on March 6th, I have just learned that my order still hasn't been shipped as of March 8th and no tracking number was available.

I hope Sonic Blue will ship the Rio Car soon. I have been told they had 192 in stock. I've heard that the lady who handles credit card authorizations had to attend to a sick child this week. I don't think I should have to call a sincere Product Manager just to get my very own Rio Car.

I'm not sure that the Rio Car should be promoted as a premium in-car mp3 player available to a mass market. In my experience, it didn't ship as advertised the first time. I won't ship as advertised even after re-ordering. As my second week waiting for my "instock" Rio Car begins, I think I would have been more comfortable ordering a an in-car computer designed to play mp3s that was so unique that you had to join a queue just to get one, the FM tuner module wasn't even available yet, voice recognition was an intended application and software was "still in development". Perhaps I would have been more comfortable ordering (and waiting for) an empeg. Then I wouldn't be inclined to "call back tomorrow" for shipping details everytime I enquire about my "priority - 10:30 am next day" shipment.