Hi everyone-

Thought I'd say hello since I'm new to Empegs and the site.
Yesterday I put my hands on my very own first Empeg! Woot!
I am now the proud owner of MkIIa #10101466.
A good friend of mine introduced me to Empegs a few months ago when I was lamenting the dearth of car-based hard-drive mp3 players on the market (I was so naive!). I'm still reading through the FAQ and post archives, as well as collecting up more info for my install.
For now, the first phase of Empeg use will be to integrate it at home and move some music around, building up that perfect playlist structure that never existed before.
I've got a MLord home dock on it's way! Fantastic piece of work!
Next phase will be the car install- into my del Sol. I found a post with pics of a Sol install, but haven't managed to contact the author about some of the details I want to discuss... like clearance on the radio-hidey-door when removing/replacing the pull-out unit.
Also, because there's only room for one DIN1 unit in the Sol, I was planning to go with a low-power 4channel amp and eventually install a tuner. I had a new thought recently, though- and that was: why not go with a new head-unit that is remote mounted and put the Empeg in the dash as planned. Hafta think about that one. Is it possible to remote start an aftermarket head in 'aux' from the Empeg?

Upgrades?
Yah- I'd like to go with an additional drive- 20gig is not enough, maybe a lighting kit (if the buttons become reliably available... it seems they are currently not), playing around with boot screens, etc., the hacked kernel is already installed, but there's some more hacks I'd like to find- like the alarm clock- what happened to that site? Anyone have a copy of the code they could send or post?

At any rate, before I become long winded about all this (whups, too late), suffice it to say that I'm very impressed with the Empeg, but really what's sold me on it is the maturity of development in the product that is made possible by the continued enthusiasm of a close-knit user community. Truely unique!
I'm happy to be here!

Oh, yeah, sorry, I won't be able to make it to any Euro-meets, I'm in California! lol