Its time for another review of the product! I'll do it in two parts - first this story of how I got it and what I did with it first, then the experiences I had installing and using it in the car...

I ordered my 12GB a week ago today (Tuesday). I could hardly contain my excitement, so I wrote to the forum as well as pestered the good folks at Empeg for tracking numbers and shipping confirmations and whatnot. I must say, the waiting is very difficult, especially if you've been looking at purchasing one for as long as I had been.

The order was processed and shipped from the U.K. on Wednesday, and arrived in my area (east coast US) Thursday. Insanely quick delivery. I did opt to go to FedEx to pick it up, because it arrived at the airport a few minutes too late to go on a truck to the delivery address.

I opened the mildly dinged but otherwise intact nondescript brown cardboard box and was greeted by a blue carrying case staring me in the face! A nice bonus! I removed that and found the pristene Empeg box undamaged.

After unpacking the Empeg itself, I found it was an amber model, not the green I had ordered. Not worried, I found a handwritten note around a green faceplate. They apparently ran out of the actual green model, so they simply shipped the faceplate. That gave me a great opportunity to get a little hands on with my player before using it.

I also noticed that there was a freely floating screw inside the case somewhere... bouncing around whereever it saw fit. When I removed the faceplate to change the colors, I was able to work the rogue part to the front. Using tweezers I was able to get the sneaky screw out between the left buttons and the display. It appears to be a hard drive screw, and I think it may have simply fallen in during manufacturing. I was in contact with support about it just in case, and after a few VERY timly and prompt replies, I have tucked the screw aside just in case I ever go inside the case in the future and can see if it is in fact supposed to be in there somewhere.

Anyway - I plug it in - VOILA! Big old Empeg logo on the screen. I am happy! I send over a few songs, and marvel at it in general... Because I am at work and don't have the wires/speakers to listen to it, I mess around with the logo editor and just play. Having a prompt on your car stereo is cool.

Once I get it home and plugged into the stereo, I am pleasantly surprised by the sound quality. Excellent. I free a hub spot for it and get the ethernet going, and start zipping files over with Emplode. The first thing that strikes me is that there is no cancel button while uploading. I realized I wanted to also send up a certain playlist, and I had to wait until it was all done before I could break out and do it. Not a problem, but I thought it was interesting.

Navigating the menus proved to be logical and easy. All in all, I was quite happy to have it, and looking forward to installing it in my car that weekend.....

(contiunued in another thread)

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greggerm 09000991