I wouldn't support a Microsoft protocol if my life depended on it. They'll use empeg (and all other WMA-friendly products) support to make everyone happy about WMA, then change the protocol and close it off to the world so they can sell their own product.. They've done it countless times already.

I just shake my head and groan every time I see people get excited about Yet Another Microsoft Product. If we allow WMA to become popular, the Internet will cease to be an abundant source of music for our Linux boxes and Mac systems and Empegs within 2-3 years.

Which is a moot point, of course, because all of my MP3's are from my own CDs .. although if development of codecs such as MP3 and Ogg are ceased because everyone uses WMA, then it will still hurt the person who uses 100% personally ripped/encoded music on their systems.

.. this all from a guy who lives 5 minutes from Microsoft HQ and has countless good friends who work there..

Anyway, I'm not criticizing the empeg software/hardware people for trying their best to build in WMA support -- It makes no sense to ignore the demands of the public. Empeg on it's own is not going to make of break WMA, and having more support just means more happy customers and more open access to audio file formats, that is until Microsoft decides to make money off of it.

- reid