Maybe one of those companies would have had the patience to let the affordable less geeky model evolve,

Okay, I was going to stay out of this thread... but I have to put my two cents in.

People are suggesting that Sonic Blue tried their darndest, but sales just weren't good enough, so being smart business people they pulled the plug -- maybe sooner than they should have.

Bullshit.

In my whole life (a longer time than anybody else on this bbs, by the way) I have never seen such out and out incompetence, mismanagement, and general apathy as demonstrated by Sonic Blue, an organization that is supposed to be a major business on the cutting edge of technology.

Immediately after taking over empeg, what did they do? They closed down the internet store, the only place in the whole world that was selling empegs. It was literally months before it even became possible to buy an empeg, and lots of people wanted to do so. How hard would it have been to turn that website back on? How hard would it have been to get their own website working? Hugo and the guys@empeg managed to get their web store up and working with a staff of less than a dozen people, at the same time developing software and two versions of the hardware. Sonic Blue with a staff of thousands (well, I don't really know, maybe it's just hundreds?) couldn't manage it even given months to do it.

Then, when they (finally) did get some semblance of a store working, they ran it with such a cavalier attitude and such a lack of care or expertise that the typical experience was amazement that they were (a) actually able to contact someone and place an order, and (b) the order arrived with the only problems being it was late and the wrong items were shipped.

Surely Digital River's incompetence was so gross that there must have been a few clues about their abilities before Sonic Blue hired them. How long do you think Crutchfield or Amazon would stay in business if they ran their operation like that?

It was clearly Sonic Blue's intent to buy the empeg development team, and not the empeg car player, and that's what they did. But I have to say that I would be nervous if I were a Sonic Blue employee. Their lack of management expertise borders on the criminal, and that can't bode well for the long-term prospects of the company.

tanstaafl.



"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"