Hello to the empeg community,
my Pioneer MiniDisk radio just doesnt cut it, when it comes to variety of stored music. I searched Hi and Lo for a reasonable HDD car stereo until I stumbled across this site.
empeg/ rio car is just what I was looking for.

I looked through the sales forum and it didnt seem right to post a WTB there. From what Ive read so far I would very much be interested in a Mk.2 or Mk.2a that can be used in the car/ at home.

Im not looking for the cheap solution, everything has its price. All I would want is something I can enjoy for a long time in the coming years...

You have come to the right place. Keep an eye on the For Sale forum - players are listed there periodically. Also, please take a look through the Empeg FAQ. There is a lot of great information there to help you get started.

...and keep an eye on eBay, too! A simple search for 'empeg' usually does the trick.

Ebay!

If you want to run the Alpha 3 player software (it plays oggs and flacs) try to get the mk2a as it has just a bit more memory. Also anyone that is selling a unit should provide you with the serial number before you buy it. I myself have purchased 2 from here and 1 from SonicBlue. I only own two since I purchased one for a friend.

Thnx a bunch everyone !

Yes, I check ebay (from now on),
Ok, I will post a WTB in the Sales forum
& thnx for the tip with the Mk.2a +Alpha 3 software

You guys rock, very friendly community indeed!
Oh, btw: only after I read the FAQ I was sure this is it!

Welcome to the BBS, hope you manage to grab a player.

Having a kick ass product is one thing, but the community pushes it into a league of its own.

Yes, it turely is. And it is great to see so many peolpe still being interested in this awesome piece of technic!

Aw, thanks guys.

Any chance of doing an FAQ for Asterisk?

My new employer has decidied VOIP is the way to go for their new offices and it looks like they want an IP phone on every desk.

Q: Are IP phones any good?
A: No, they really suck, I've tried them.

How's that?

Perfect!

Yeah. I've never understood VoIP. As a remote access protocol, sure, but for an office? Why bother? There's existing equipment that works better and is cheaper.

Then again, Asterisk is really cheap. How much are the phones these days? Looks like about the same price as PBX phones. And you're not tied into a single vendor. And you can realistically administer it yourself. And you can avoid long-distance or trunk charges to a remote office. And you don't have to have a separate telco line for your voice.

Maybe it does make sense now.

For what it's worth, my experience with VOIP phones is limited to my friends who have VOIP phones at their house, through their internet service provider. So the issues like call quality, latency delay, dropped calls, etc., are litely to be different than what would happen with an office-managed VOIP phone.

I posted a WTB in the sales seciton, so this thread can continue its exchange about VoIP

Hahahahah. Very good...

Yes, threads on this board due tend to, uh, wander a bit. But you will find them very informative, amusing and challenging. I do not think we have missed any topics at one time or another.

Our 3Com NBX system is great quality and extremely reliable. But it runs on Layer 2 (ethernet). We have the IP license and have used it over the net on a VPN with pretty crappy results.

On the other hand, I've had marvelous experience with Skype. In fact, one of these days, I'll probably drop Voicepulse (which I've been pretty pleased with) and just get a skype-in number.

I have one friend with Speakeasy and another with Vonage. The speakeasy friends have the latency problem, and the Vonage friend you can't ever get a fax to go through.

Sorry, I'm sticking with POTS. Never feel like I'm on a walkie-talkie, no problems.

I'm sticking with POTS for a while, too. I have two small kids; I like 911 to work properly. My brother has voip, and he couldn't call the power company when the power went out...

-jk

Oh yeah. I forget that faxed signatures are legally binding while otherwise electronically-sent signatures are not.

I'm not really sure how you can differentiate between faxed documents and scanned-and-emailed-and-printed documents. Or, for that matter, faxes that have gone through an email gateway. Or faxes that use the internet as a transmission medium instead of public phones lines. Or ones that are connected to VoIP lines on both ends, never having seen a POTS line, but using POTS technology at both ends.

POTS line = Plain Old Telephone Service. Any hardwired telephone line from the bygone era...

I think with the POTS line, you have telephone company records that a dedicated wire connection was established point to point. That might help the legal aspect of things.

Whoa, when did this thread turn into a Vonage topic?

FAX
I have Vonage and use one line for both voice and fax. Adding a 2nd dedicated Vonage fax line got to be too expensive. The final cost was only a few dollars cheaper than having my Talk America POTS line.

There are a few tricks to get faxing to work....
1) Set your initial connect speed pretty low like 9600 baud. If that doesn't work, go lower. You faxes will take longer to send, but just remember that those minutes are already included in your bill. Even long distance.

2) Do the same with your initial connect speed for receiving. For some reason, I can receive quicker than send.

3) You Voice Mail will not work with FAXing. You need to disable this and use a normal answering machine. The trick here is to record your "Greeting" with about 2-3 seconds of silence at the beginning. This gives your fax (hooked up to the same physical line as the answering machine) a moment to detect if the call is a fax or not. The FAX should be in "Auto" mode.

If anyone needs more tips, let me know. I can go through my menus on the fax machine and see if I set anything else. I fax all the time and maybe 1 wont go through a month. On the second try, it works.

911
Check out your area through Vonage... I live near a major city so I already had E911. Another thing to remember is that even if you cancel your POTS line, by law, they have to keep 911 active on it. So you could have one phone in your house still connected to the POTS line and have it be the cool RED emergency phone used only for 911. And it'll be free!

Outages
Outages are rare and are only because the power has gone out or my internet is down. With Lingo, my service was down all the time! Vonage has been much better. The cool thing, however, is that you can set Vonage up to detect an outage. When it occurs, all calls are forwarded to a 2nd number of your choice. So, when Vonage is down because of power or internet loss, all calls go to my cellphone.

Quality
I used to get an annoying echo problem on Vonage. I could hear myself on the return. I just called Vonage on my cellphone while my wife was making test calls with the Vonage line and they had it fixed in about 15 minutes.

Porting Numbers
I got lucky and was able to port my number. Vonage will port any number they can. It depends on your area and the company that currently "owns" your number. If there are any delays, it's not because of Vonage. When I moved back into my home town, I asked the phone company if the number I grew up with was available. It was! And now, if I move to anywhere else in the US, I can take that number. I'm planning on moving about 20 miles from here and wont need a new area code. It's cool having the number you grew up with. I still get calls for my dad from time to time and it's nice being able to keep my dad's old buddies in touch with him.