>>1) Some sort of archival capability. I am investing enough time into marking up my tracks, setting up my playlists, and selecting my music that it is well worth it to me to shell out $100 to buy a hard drive that I can back my empeg up onto. I am getting very concerned about losing my data due to a failure of either the hard disk or the software. If you are concerned about enabling piracy, then I can live with an archive solution that only restores onto Empeg.<<

It's not a complete solution, but one thing you might consider is using a CD-R to archive your MP3 tracks after you've downloaded them to the empeg. You can archive about 10 hours of MP3 music onto a 59 cent disk, and in the event of a disaster it would at least save you the trouble of locating and re-converting your original music. I guess you could also archive your emplode database the same way, but since I am #8741 on the waiting list and still don't have an empeg I am not real clear about how that works and what data is in the empeg and what is on the PC.

tanstaafl.

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