Thanks, everyone.

I remember that time 3 years ago very clearly.

I was wishing someone had a really good way of playing MP3s in the car. I remember having hopes that the AutoPC (which had just come out) might let us do that. At the time, I didn't know that it had such low processor speed and wasn't optimized for MP3 playback. All I saw was "CD-ROM and CPU in the dash" and assumed it was just a question of software to make it happen.

Then I stumbled across the empeg.com page linked from another web site (don't remember which one) and instantly forgot everything I'd been reading about in-car MP3 playback up until that point. Now here was someone doing it right in every way.

Then, something bad happened, which was that I got my car broken into and my CD player stolen (for the second time). But out of the ashes of that pain came the knowledge that I now had an decent-sized check from the insurance company coming... One ebay transaction later, and the rest is history, eh?