I have not had stomach strong enough to read too carefully through all this, so one or two points may be already made:

It is sad that people like Dredd react to unheard of commitment to customer satisfaction by empeg by pushing them to become like everybody else (they are not moving there, of course, but I am sure the thought has passed Rob's or Hugo's mind). If they behaved like Sony, IBM or Microsoft, nobody would, knowing rules, expect essentially anything apart from barest waranty. Dredd is mad at them because in one thing they are just ten times as good as others, in stead of usual 100 .

My IBM laptop is unreadable in daylight (sunny day, outside in a shade), let alone direct sunlight, which did not stop IBM from advertising them depicting a guy on a beach using it. What do you think would be reaction if I required them to design and produce, then supply it free of charge, aviation-grade display that is readable on the beach?

On my car (Renault Twingo) centrally located LCD speedometer dims when the headlights are on. As the result, it is unreadable with roof open on sunny day with lights on. Rear window wiper has no intermitent setting, making it unusable in light rain or slow, city driving. (I had a gripe or two with every car I ever drove.) Do you expect Renault to recall the car or its present owners to stop buying Renaults?

As several posters noted, current MkII display is more readable in sunlight than both MkI (AR coating or not) and Sonys, Alpinas and others. So, relative to both earlier iteration of their product and industry mainstream, it is not defective nor flawed. The only 'mistake' guys@empeg made is being honest: they said 'OK, direct sunlight might be a problem, we are working on a fix', rather than 'Here is an amazing supper-dupper reflect-o-magic add on that leaves other's sunlight readability in the dust for mere $50!' as other would, if their designs were upgradable in the first place. I would really not like guys@empeg to conclude that honesty does not pay (as it obviously does not with Dredd).

As for software upgradebility and paying for it, I am only aware of 'automagical' upgrades in MS OSes and handfull of other Widows products. Even then, 'upgrades' often tend to break basic functionality and serve more marketing than technical purpose. Anyway, I certanly had to pay for every new generation of MS Office, CorellDraw etc. For high-end products (like serious databases, CASE or development tools, Windows or Unix) one usually pays 12-25% of base price for yearly support, which still does not guarantee bug fixes nor free upgrades (on will get minor bugfix upgrades for free, but will still pay - at discount - for major new versions).

I could go on... I am not sure whether I will buy a new AR coated display, because I have not yet decided whether I prefer washout in direct sunlight or slightly blurred display. It would be nice if guys@empeg would provide us with a couple of good, hi-res 'before and after' photos. My decision will in no way whatsoever be influenced by having to pay for it or not.

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green