I don't think anything *comparable* will show up in the market. HD based mp3 players will appear, but not with the same capabilities, and certainly not with the "hackability."

You are absolutely correct. I shouldn't have looked at this with such narrow vision. For my purposes, however, I am sure that future players will be adequate to my needs. The only thing I do with my empeg is play music on it. I hardly ever use the remote, the search capabilities, the visuals, the insert/append, the mark tracks, the group by genre or year, or any of the other fancy capabilities that so many of the true geeks (meant in the most complimentary and praiseworthy manner) on this bbs find so entrancing. I have never installed a special kernal or third-party software. I have never taken the player down to a shell prompt. All I do is play music -- and for that, there is nothing else on the market that can match it. Yet. But gven time, and probably not a lot of time, there'll be something available that will make me happy should the need to replace my empeg arise.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"