then emplode could tell the empeg to grab stuff from server instead of copying stuff to client

Installing Samba on the player would not help Emplode at all. You would have to rewrite the player software as well as emplode before that would work.

If you want to improve the transfer speeds to the player from your laptop, you can use USB which will be a little faster than the 2mb wireless card you're describing. But generally, the transfer speeds would be best if you were able to run emplode or emptool directly on the machine where the MP3 files reside and the empeg is plugged into a hub directly connected to that machine.

Do a search on the BBS on the word "samba", you'll probably find previous threads on the topic.