Well, click here for a comparison matrix of three products in this category including the Rio Car.

There are also two new hard disk based players from Sony and Pioneer but they have some pretty severe drawbacks. Their advantage is that they also have a CD drive in them so that they can rip the CDs right there in the dash. But their drawbacks are that they are more expensive and less feature-rich than the Rio Car. And not everyone wants to have to be in their car to rip their CDs.

And the other thing is that the Rio Car, being a somewhat open system based on Linux, is quite hackable. Read through the first section of the FAQ and see if you think it's worth the money.

And let me just say that I paid about $1000.00 for my first empeg player, and I considered it an extreme bargain at that price, it was easily worth much more. Just about everyone who owns one agrees that it's the best MP3 player money can buy.

Is anything better going to come along soon? Well, here's a hint: When the player went out of production, a significant number of owners bought a second (or third or fourth) player just so that they would have backup units if their first one stopped working. It's that good.