For all the naysayers, consider this: the empeg guys may be secretly plotting the overthrow of S3, tricking them into being a fantastic organization with incredible products and top-notch customer support.

Perhaps more realistically, this becomes a golden chance for the empeg software to proliferate on all kinds of devices, whether portable gizmos like the PJB-100 or, heaven knows, some future cel-phone music device. The empeg-car player will almost certainly become cheaper and more widely available as it evolves, and that's a good thing. I paid a mint for my empeg-car player, and it was well worth it, but I would have been happier spending less. Furthermore, S3 can probably get us screen that are more readable in daylight and remote controls with meaningful legends. That ain't bad. Stretching a little, you can also imagine an integrated empire of MP3 products where Joe Consumer never has to deal with a PC. They're 3/4 of the way there already.

It's also in S3's interests to promote the empeg-car player as a development platform. It's all about lock-in. If a bunch of Internet enthusiasts crank out software to replace the boot logo, to do automatic volume adjustment, and heaven knows what else, that only helps to steer other users to the platform. Just because S3 is a big corporation, don't assume they'll naturally gravitate toward using Microsoft products (although it could still happen, of course).

Even if you're pessimistic, keep in mind that the empeg guys still have unvested stock options to keep them around for another few years.

Dan