Outside of upgrading the hard drive I don't know of any "hacks" but for further clarification:

Rebadged rio receivers currently will not work with the Rio Central since the recievers use version 1.04 and the central has never had an "official" upgrade. It works great with the original dell units as well as the original rio receivers. There has been mention of a beta release but rumor has it that it took away functionality of the portables but fixed a few bugs.

This thing only has hpna and usb 1.1 so you need to get a dongle to use it with ethernet and it is EXTREMELY SLOW....

Ripping CD's is MUCH slower than ripping with my new pc.

Streaming of internet radio is not a feature but is a feature of tRio.

The new portable players are not supported. My older Rio 800 works great however.

Transferring files to an empeg is a two step process. First you download the files with jemplode to a pc then you upload the files to the empeg. Very cumbersome.

In multi cd mode it often crashes while ripping your cd collection. Rumor has it that the unreleased beta version fixed that problem though.

I'm not sure if I strayed from what you were asking, but that's my input anyhow....

Will I be purchasing another? No. I was extremely disappointed with the lack of upgrades for this particular product, although it is a third of what I paid. I wouldn't hold your breath for new features or functionality; the empeg seems to be a MUCH better and supported product, however, this new "low" price *may* entice the right people to purchase it but ...I doubt it .