1: IMHO the slimness is good; I hate fat klunky remotes :-) I have rather large hands and no
problems reaching the keys with my thumb.
2 - 5: I think there's only so much sorting/grouping and functionality you can press into a 6x4
grid, something is bound to end up where it is not optimal...

There are other remotes that work with the empeg (after adding some third party software),
more or less ergonomical, that have been discussed on the board, try a search for 'remote'

As to marking the buttons, if not outright on the keys, maybe some markers in style with the
little nubbins on the 'f' and 'j' keys on many keyboards?
I tend to do an subconcious count, third row from the left 4th key from top... (currently relearning
that as I just received a MkII...) I orient the remote by feel by feeling the battery compartment
latch and/or the pit for the IR LED.

Ring button - would be nice, but depending on what designs are available for reuse it might
require a totally custom design...

Space - the search function will also skip a leading 'The', non-alphanumeric characters like
dashes, parens etc and fold accented characters (like åäö, for instance) into their base characters.
This is also somewhat non-intuitive and should be mentioned in the docs (don't know if it is)

Icons... has been discussed before, Wire (Lars Karlslund) showed some ideas
to the empeg guys at the second Amersfoort user meet, don't know if icons are in the future plans.
Myself, I don't like icons very much... most of the time I find I have to guess what the symbology
means - or hover with the mouse and hope there's a descriptive balloon text...
It is hard to make a symbol set that is easy to read and clear to all (or at least most)
groups of people.
However, a feature to localize the texts in the menus could be nice for those unfamiliar with english.

Remaining time - will IIRC be in 1.1 (oops, make that 2.0 now... time to change the mantra ;-)
both for the individual song and the whole playlist

/Michael