Order the Empeg now, you silly person.

Here is the thing:

1) It takes time to rip your collection, so you won't fill it up right away. It'll take at least a couple months if you take your time about it and don't do any marathon ripping sessions.
2) You don't HAVE to rip every album now, just your favorites and the ones you sorta-like.
3) Get a single-drive unit, like the 18gb model, and when you fill that up, add your own drive (at whatever the biggest size they've managed to come up with in laptop drives is at that time). That way, you won't have to re-upload your collection, you'll just add the second drive and the disk space will appear and be usable.

Understand that bigger drives than 18gb will fit in the Empeg, the only problem is Empeg being able to source those drives in large quantities. If you're just a consumer, making onesie-twosie purchases, you should be able to get the bigger drives with less trouble.

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Tony Fabris