> So, I guess I'll just get the Dell one. I'll report here when I receive it.

I got this a couple days ago. Here's my opinion(s) of it:

Overall, I like it a lot. There are a few usability quirks, and lots of the cool
functionality of the empeg-car devices are missing, but it stands well as
a product on its own.

As I said earlier in the thread, it cost $300 from Dell. They shipped a few
days after I ordered it. It arrived with all the needed cable, a poster showing
how to connect the audio cables (for a few different configurations), a simple
manual, a infrared remote, and a CD. The CD had the empeg software (this
is all I looked at) and some other ripping/encoding software (AudioCatalyst?).

I didn't have a windows machine, so I installed the server software in vmware
on linux. It loaded fine, but windows complained about having a bunch of files
replaced with "older versions" and told me to "run setup" to fix them. This was
an unimportant disk image, so I didn't worry about it... and all still worked fine. I'm
sure, though, if my father has the same experience he'll complain about it. (That's
what he gets for running windows...)

The windows software is a very simple interface. There's an icon in the tray which
tells you (by its color) whether it has connected with a player. Clicking on the icon
allows you to change the address assignment settings and add mp3's on your disk
to the database. This brings up a simple dialog that searches all the specified drives
and directories (C:\ by default) for mp3's, and reports how many it added. It is quite
quick, since it is probably just noting the location of those files.

There's also a "pause" option when right-clicking on the icon. When I tried this, nothing
happened to the playing, but the option changed to say "resume" (or something similar).
When I clicked on this, then it stopped playing. But, I couldn't do anything to get it back
and working again. I restarted the windows software, and rebooted the player, but the
player just gave a "connection refused error" (even though the tray icon was blue). I ended
up having to disconnect the player at the mains and completely reboot windows before it
started working again. I haven't tried that again...

The physical player was a surprise for me. Its dimensions are smaller than I had
expected: it is a little larger than half of the width of a standard stereo component.
It fit nicely in the spot I usually connect my Mk2 at home. The back has an ethernet
jack, an HPNA jack, a phone-passthrough jack, left & right spring-clip speaker
terminals, left & right RCA jacks, and a 1/4" phono jack.

I've only used the ethernet and RCA jacks. I didn't try the HPNA networking, or
use the amplified outputs.

There is also a power connector. On the front is a pushbutton power switch, which
seems to just put the unit in standby mode when turned "off". Disconnecting the power
directly loses the settings (such as display mode, etc.). I also noticed that the infrared
sensor is creatively hidden inside/behind the power button -- pretty neat.

The front consists of a backlit LCD display in the center, with three buttons (random,
menu, repeat) below it; a pushbutton/rotary (ala Mk2) control on the right; and a
four-button (play/pause, stop, ff, rw) cluster on the left. The rotary control is used
for navigating the (vertical) menus. The behavior seems backwards to me: clockwise
moves the menu "up"... but I'm sure that's a design decision that would always end
up displeasing half of the people. :) Maybe they should make it a config option?
The volume can only be changed when using the amplified outputs. I couldn't find any
way to attenuate the line-out.

The buttons themselves seem kind of cheesy. They feel light and almost breakable,
definitely not like the strong clicky feel of the Mk1 and Mk2 buttons. One quirk I also
noticed was that the left/right orientation of the random and repeat buttons is different
on the faceplate and the remote. This was a little confusing when going back and forth,
and not looking at the button labels.

The remote works well. I had plenty of range in my large living room. There's a 4-button
cluster in the middle that mirrors the play/pause/stop/etc. buttons on the face. There's a
full numeric keypad with the corresponding letter designations (like the car player). There's
a (rather small and oddly placed) up/down select button and menu/enter button arrangment;
it seems it would be nicer to have this work like the now-common four-way control cluster
on most remotes. There's also a search button (at the very bottom) that cycles between
select music by artist/genre/album/title.

The display is okay. I found it hard to read from far away (the display on my Mk2 is easier
to read), but not much worse than an average VCR. It is backlit when you press a button
(on face or remote), which turns off after a short timeout. There are a few (4?) display modes.
One, that displays everything (artist, title, album, encoding rate, and a large timer). Another,
that displays the title in a larger font. And two that display a small (1/4 of the screen) "scope",
one is reverse-video. Adequate.

The file serving works great. The is no database/playlist management whatsoever, don't
expect to have hierarchal playlists like the empeg-car. You can search by ID3 fields only.
But, since I mostly use my Mk2 in "shuffle everything" mode, I didn't care much. The only
quirk I noticed is that the player is silent when fast-forwarding or rewinding -- just the
elapsed time counter increments.

The above may seem like a lot of complaints, but they're just my small reactions to items
that were different than I had expected. Overall, I loved it. Worth every penny. I'm
sure it will be a slam-dunk gift for my dad -- a windows-head and audio buff. I told my
boss about it today, and he wants me to help outfit his new (big!) house with these... I can
already think of at least 6 places in his house where it'd be cool to have one.

-j