Greetings!

This is something that I had thought about before going ahead and getting a spare for myself. Some thoughts on the matter...

I have had my empeg for a little over a year now. It has not had any problems, and I hope that it will not develop any new ones. Nothing, of course, lasts forever. If I have a hardware problem in the future that is not disk related, my intent would be to transplant the disks.

It is true that the second one could have problems, or be a lemon to start with. Before putting the unit away, I would test it first, load up a few files, give it a "shakedown". This should get rid of any "new system" problems while still under warranty.

To be honest, I think that the empeg folks will still be around for quite some time, and even if there is no warranty you might be able to get the unit fixed for a few years out. Perhaps enough Red Bull or a case of Oreos will help. Just from seeing these folks in action, I really suspect that few (if any) users will not be able to get help repairing a broken unit.

As to longer term, after the new warranty expires and there is no one else to help and both units have problems, I will attempt to fix it myself. This really depends on how the units fail, but you never know. I would have components from two failed units to work with.

To be honest, all of this is speculation. Given the changing technology, I would guess that the Mark2, way ahead of its time today, will still be obsolete by the time I have to worry about this. With the size of hard drives growing so quickly, knowing the empeg folks are still hard at work on integrated systems, I think there will be something better by the time I really have to worry about it.

Finally, I had been thinking of getting a second unit anyway. This just knocked me off the fence.

So, if you are just now thinking about getting an empeg, or have been toying with the idea of a second for whatever reason, now is the time to act one way or the other. If you are buying it only for insurance, you have to think about it yourself - if it is worth it.

I am just glad to be able to have my entire CD collection in the car all at once! You can never have enough disk space!

Paul G.
SN# 090000587 (96GB Smoke)