As a newbie myself, I have found the forum to be useful. Being an old hand on a certain car forum, I recognise how important a faq (official or unofficial) is prior to participating in such a BBS. I've used the search function but the high number of results bare no answers to my particular questions. It could be that this forum is a victim of it's success, making a search akin to finding a needle in a haystack of needles using a magnet!

Walking in the shoes of a newbie, there are ambiguities in the riocar faq. I don't know what the target audience was for the empeg, but it can be quite daunting for beginners to be offered such versatility without firm directions in say mp3 encoding. Using things like EAC, Lame and MP3-Trim proves to be not entirely user friendly (although lame 3.90 has made it easier).

However since all the units have been sold, the last wave of newbies will mature at the same rate, with annoying postings trailing off.