...it is reasonably simple for a "technical" person to build a CarPC that plays mp3s among other media with an LCD display, controls, and more that will match up well against the empeg, and do so for a damn good price too.

Well, then, by all means, you should do so, and go into limited production and make a ton of money.

Oh, wait... Are you going to put the 10 man-years or so into software development that empeg has? Are you going to use impact-resistant notebook hard drives with sophisticated caching software so that it will live for more than a few months? Maybe a keyboard and a mouse to run it -- or were you planning on some sort of hardware interface that is actually usable in a moving vehicle? And how about a decent sound processor: I'm not talking a Sound Blaster sound card here, but something with a 24 bit Burr-Brown DAC and maybe an equalizer, otherwise you might as well just encode everything at 64kB/sec and save the disk space.

It seems so easy at first glance. I was on the verge of acquiring bits and pieces to do my own "CarPC" and had just realized what a truly daunting task it was going to be when I came across the empeg, and never looked back.

Yes, it is possible to make a PC play music in your car. But to get even a fraction of the usability and sound quality of the empeg... well, Hugo and the rest of the guys@empeg might have a few enlightening tales to tell about what was involved.

tanstaafl.