I've got both an Empeg (actually, many Empeg's) and an iPod. I can tell you right now that the 20gb storage on the iPod is a big problem if your music library is bigger than 20gb. I have almost 40gb worth of Mp3's and trying to figure out what you do want and what you don't want can be incredibly frustrating (Aarrgghh!!!). When you consider that the iPod uses Music Match to send and arrange music, it's makes it an even larger hassle. If you want more reasons for having an Empeg as an in-car unit over the iPod, you can add the countless playback features the Empag has and the iPod doesn't. Just the fact that the iPod doesn't have an "insert, append, enqueue, replace" option is enough for me. Besides the iPods lack of playback features, who wants to have some dangling wiring coming from their dash all the time so they can hook-up thier Mp3 player.

Don't get me wrong, the iPod is a nice unit and I bought mine for a few specific purposes, but I would never consider it to be any part of I.C.E. $.02