I've had an EPOC in my lab for about 14 months.  How functional it might be in your application depends on what you want to do with it.  The output is easily manipulated in Matlab, but unless you understand Matlab, you may have some problems getting data output in a way that it can be analyzed.  The biggest problem with the Epoc SDK is that it doesn't allow for any control inputs or outputs.  So, doing anything that is time correlated or looking at EPs is nearly impossible.  An Openvibe acquisition client is available, so you could use Openvibe and just ignore the Emotiv SDK, but, unfortunately, the Openvibe client works only with SDK 1.0.0.4, which is, pretty much, unavailable.  I see you are at CSU, talk to Tony Sahley in Audiology.  He may be able to help you.

Tank you John,

What about using different programming language such as C++ or Java with the SDK?

I haven't deeply explored the low-level hooks into the SDK.  That's one of the things I'm planning on getting to this summer.