I just purchased an apple ipod for my wife to use while at work. She
wanted a portable MP3 player and since I drop her off then take my empeg
into work she's left out in the cold.
So I weighed all of my options and looked at all of the portables out
there, only to discover what I already expected. The Ipod is the empeg
of portable MP3 players bar none!

I don't have a Mac at home but since I work at a university
commandeering one was a piece of cake. I apple shared out my music from
my win2K server,mounted it on the Mac and fired up itunes.

My first comment is that this thing SCREAMS!!! 3 gig in about 10 min.
Firewire is unbelievable! In this aspect it is very dissapointing that
the empeg does not have something this cool to transfer files. Actually
this is a big detriment to the entire MP3 player market.

I would be willing to cut and solder my way to adding firewire to my
empeg for these kind of transfer speeds, if it were possible. I would
probably be more likely to add/remove music from my empeg, as it is now
I need to budget time to do this just in case I get the "checking disk
integrity" 15 min delay.

I was not overly impressed with Itunes, emplode is better.

The fact that this thing is also a file taxi is VERY cool. I think that
the MP3 community has been reading this board and getting a lot of
ideas!!

There is a company who already has an alpha version that allows you to
connect it to a PC.
http://www.mediafour.com/products/xplay/
Although many people think that Steve Jobs will unveil iTunes for the PC
at MacWorld on Jan 7.

There are also several rumors about PDA like functionality being added
in future releases of the firmware.

The price ($399) is reasonable considering all that is built into this
device.

If you are looking for a portable MP3 player get the ipod!

John