When I use the "power off" off command while in the car, the unit stops, but the display does not turn off.

This is strange. Please give more details of what you mean when you say "display does not turn off". Tell us exactly what buttons you press, and exactly what you see on the screen.

When I drag the playlists in emplode and organize them the way I want (I've checked posistions) the empeg still lists them alphabetically.

If you mean that the entries on the "Playlists" menu on the player are alphabetical, this is by design. You can turn this feature off if you use version 2.0 of the software and emplode (it's an option in the emplode 2.0 "configure player" screen.

Any thoughts on the Beta versions?

If you want to kill the alphabetical sorting of the playlist menu, then you have little choice but to run the beta at this point.

There are two major bugs in the current beta (11), they both have work arounds:

1) There is an occasional freeze-up due to a masked interrupt not getting unmasked (or something like that, don't ask me details, it would take a scientist to explain it). This bug has been fixed in the latest Hijack kernel. So if you install beta 11, make sure to install Hijack afterwards, it will fix this bug.

2) There is a problem where if you use the new "favorite visuals" feature, it will make your config.ini file grow larger each time you synch twice in the same emplode session. So if you use beta 11, make sure to completely exit emplode after each time you synch, and the problem will never happen.

So try 2.0 beta 11, you should be OK as long as you do the above. Remember that you have to upgrade both Emplode and the player software (two separate downloads).