Not worth the money

Okay so I got this for Christmas and can only say that I was very disappointed. In theory it is a good idea and if you lived in a more remote area it might work great for you but in Southern CA I guess we just don't have enough 'not used' FM stations for this thing to work right.

I was so excited to finally be able to use my iPod in the car and this was a real let down. First I plugged it in to the cigarette lighter and all was well. I mounted the bracket to the dashboard and attached the tuner gadget, found an FM station that was static and tunned the gadget to the same station...viola! My All 80s music out of my iPod into the car speakers. Yippie! It was not the clearest transmission but at least I had all my music at my fingertips...great, until I got 15 miles away from home headed south on the freeway and all of a sudden my music turned into Latin something-or-other. Fantastic! Except that I don't speak Spanish and that was not Billy Joel.

Okay so tune to a different station that is all static and change the gadget to match...nothing. Find another one, nothing...etc. I tried 15 static 'non' stations and none of them worked. I went back to the original and it went from 80s to Latin as the signal strength changed. Once I got off the freeway (yes I was the slow car in the fast lane not paying attention to the traffic wizzing by me at 90 miles an hour because I was busy looking for my tunes) I found a 2nd station that would pick up my iPod transmission. Great! Except that it was really fuzzy and sounded horrible. No thanks!

Back to the radio. Come to find out these things aren't the greatest. A friend bought one for her dad last year and he had the same problems. Plus I guess if you pass someone else using one on the station you are on you can pick up their music as interference. Reminds me of when portable phones came out. We could hear our neighbors talking on their portable next door. I'm thinking that this would be great when I drive across the dessert to AZ but its a pricey gadget for the once a year trip and not really what I was in the market for. So, I'll be taking it back (thanks anyway babe) and looking for something a bit more advanced to transfer my iPod to my car stereo...maybe I'll be buying that new car sooner than I thought so that I can plug my iPod right into the stereo.:)