"High partner acceptance factor"? I don't think the Rio Central could really boast that!

It doesn't seem to do some of the neato stuff that Rio Central could -- all the things like playing the CD while ripping it, even allowing fast-forward and rewind. But actually I bet not one Central owner in 100 even knows it can do that (and that's assuming there are 100 owners). But for the task the RipNAS sets itself -- completely headless music serving, with no pretence that it can be used in a computer-less household -- it does seem to tick all the boxes: fanless, dual encode (FLAC+MP3), freedb+AMG, UPnP+DAAP. Unlike the Central (but like the Central would if we were doing it now) it fulfils for CDs my new mantra for home entertainment gear: terminate incoming signals to Ethernet at the boundary and let UPnP sort it all out. (Next they need to invent the FreeviewNAS.)

And naturally it strokes my Empeg pride just a little bit that they need a 1.6GHz Intel Atom and Windows Home Server to do in 2008 a fraction of what we did in 2002 on a 200MHz StrongARM and Linux.

Peter