A couple questions, not totally answered by a cursory search of posts in my ~9mo. absence:

Some of these were answered in the FAQ entry on this subject.

When its back in duty between car, home, and office, a filestore will be very handy.

I would like to see this as well. As it stands right now, you can use Emplode to send ZIP files to the player, then use EmpegTaxi to retrieve them via USB. You can also use Displayserver to do the same thing.

I am hoping that one day we will see a Taxi folder built into Emplode. Empeg guys, is this possible in the near future?

Is there some new kick-ass equivalent about to hit the market in the next few months that'll make me regret buying my second MK2 this late?

Not one made by the Empeg team. They're out of the car player business, allegedly.

There was a product being demonstrated at one of the trade shows by a big company (don't remember who... Panasonic? Sony? JVC? I forget) that was a hard-drive-plus-CD-ripper unit that lived in your dash. Each CD you inserted could be ripped to the internal hard drive. However, it had all that "digital rights management" copyprotection stuff on it, it wasn't hackable, the hard drive was small, and it was just as expensive as the empeg. Besides, it's still vaporware at this point, who knows when it'll be out.

But for now, the same alternatives to the Empeg exist as they did before you sold your player. The Neo and the Phatnoise. They have been nicely summarized here.

Basically, you've owned an empeg before so you know you won't regret buying one. It's still the best.