I know Rob already commented on this, but I thought I'd add my perspective.

Up until about a year and a half ago, I only had 12 CDs in my collection. Even with only 12 CDs, I only ever listened to about 3 of them in the car cuz it was such a pain in the ass to change them.

CD auto-changers are supposed to help with this, and combined with a good head unit it isn't TOO bad.

But as people get LOTS of music and lots of CDs, even CD auto-changers become a pain in the ass, and I'm sure there has been more than one accident involved with driving and shuffling through 12 CDs of music looking for one song.

I don't recall empeg ever saying they were targeting the whole vehicle population with their target. The empeg car's best feature is it's capacity, in which a select percentage of the population would ever really be able to utilize. Only people with this capacity of music will really be able to catch it's usefulness, as other head units do a fairly good job at what they do (even visuals, and 1/10th the cost).

Demoing the product to people that don't take lots of music into the car with them will have a tough time understanding it's usefullness (and it's value).

I'm not at all suprised that some people will find the empeg car a waste. Hell, all my friends are techies and I'm sure they are going to think I'm green when I get one.

People who are going to want the empeg car are people that are LOOKING for the empeg car (or it's features). And Rob already discussed the people that are in that community. They've already set their target, and it's not for general consumer use.

So if people don't get it, fine. I'm sure the empeg folks were expecting that.

In contrast. MP3 players are spawning rapidly, and I've seen a few. They just don't have what empeg does, and I don't see any that will in my "want" timeframe . I think a lot of the negative comments towards the empeg car are either made without realizing the the options, or expecting something from a product that is unprecedented and unanswered in the market. I'm sure when CD players first came out, a lot of customers probably throttled the "well this sucks if it doesn't do this" stuff. It's kind of hard to put EVERYTHING in from the start.

Kureg