What is a typical boot time for the Empeg, and if this varies, what affects it ?

Just timed mine - 10 seconds from power on to fully loaded player application. That's with about 10GB of music loaded, if you have a lot more that'll probably add another second or two. Single-drive empegs usually take another few seconds to wait for a non-existent second drive (there's a kernel patch that avoids the extra wait).

Not bad for a Linux computer, eh?

Get one!

Borislav