Hello all,

I have seen many warnings about the fact that it is dangerous to leave your Empeg in extreme temperatures. My question is, what are the potential dangers? All I have seen mentioned is possible damage to the hard drives. Is there serious threat of damage to the unit itself? And as far as hard drive damage goes, are we just talking about a moderate shortining of the life of the drive, or we talking about a potential immediate failure?

The reason I ask is because do not wish to have to carry the Empeg with me ALL of the time...If we're talking about halving the life of the hard drive because I leave the unit in the car in minus ten degree weather sometime, I can live with that. If we're talking about possible damage to the Empeg, well, that is just not acceptable. It's not like I'm going to be able to just pick up another one.

Extreme cold can crack the main board and/or components (I'm sure this has to be quite extreme). This should be quite a bit lower than the temperature specified for the drive.

Extreme heat can do the same thing - plus both will expose manufacturing defects sooner (bad solder joints, etc). Either extreme can cause premature failure or lower the lifespan of components (including discs) just because of the stress applied to the materials.

For most of the stuff we're talking about pretty extreme temperature (all things considered). I won't leave my unit outside overnight in the cold (I'm in Canada - Toronto). I will leave it if I drop into a store, etc. If I was going to a bar I'd probably still leave it. If I was going to be partying for hours on end at a club then I'd probably avoid bringing it in the first place.

I'm sure going from one extreme to the other is probably the worst thing you can do. So if you ever get it very hot or very cold, let it settle to a stable room temperature before exposing it to the opposite end of the range.

People are using their empegs all over the world. There have been threads of operational problems with high heat (this depends on installation as well). I haven't seen anything about problems in cold weather yet.

Bottom line for me is this: If I can avoid leaving it in the car, I avoid it. In many places of the world you'll run a far greater risk of theft than component failure.

Bruno