as with others i don't agree with you on many of the points you're trying to make.. not that your wrong with how you feel.. nothing personal. my background is in software development and now as a technologist who reviews, researches, writes articles and present new and emerging technologies to companies throughout new england. you (the consumer) have so many ways to listen to music in this car (xm, radio, cd, ipod, other-music-player, cf card full of mp3s, cd full of mp3s, hard drive full of mp3s..) i find it hard to believe anyone could find fault with this cars ability to provide music... no, bose is not the best.. i'm talking about this cars ability to offer up music

i dont see the in-car harddrive as 'insulting' i see it as liberating us away from a big ole six changer box in our trunks or from it taking up space within the nav box behind the dash. It's a step in the right direction..

 

I think that it is great for the normal consumer. For the .25% of consumers that need an a$$ amount of music in their car, than no car will ever be good enough. You will always have to upgrade any car to fit your specific needs. But for the rest of us, it is a new era of ways to get music into our car.

 

jnmunsey needs to relax.

get a bigger HDD. Guarantee people will find ways to upgrade it. If not, I know I will do it once I get the car.

 

Complaining, complaining, complaining. The Infiniti system can hold a total of 93GB of music (excluding that one CD and including a 80GB iPod). 93GB of music is equivalent to approximately what... 28,000songs? I don't think Infiniti ever expected anyone to WANT to have like 28,000+ songs in one car. If every song was approximately 4 minutes... that's about 1,866 HOURS of music... or 77 3/4 days worth of music. I highly, highly doubt that people will want almost 78 days worth of music in a CAR. Who actually listens to that much music? lol

I feel that you're thinking so extreme that car companies would just laugh at you. The Infiniti has the most versatile car music system in the car industry in its class. Don't compare a modified car music system compared to one that Infiniti provides to you because well... modified car music systems can go way beyong any car music system that has ever been created by any car manufacturer. So instead of just complaining about Infiniti's car music system... complain about all of them.

Also... should I add in a 100GB mp3 player because the Infiniti can play it through AUX? There.

 

I didn't say the in-car hard drive is insulting I said 9.5GB was insulting. This is 2007, do you know how hard it is to even find a 10GB hard drive for sale these days? Notebook drive availability at most vendors START at 30GB capacity these days. Heck the empeg in 1999 even used Flash memory in addition to the HD...

If you are the software developer/technologist you say you are I would think you'd have heard about how awesome the software that Rio made for MP3s.. (Well the software that was derived from the original empeg and put onto some of the later generation Rio mp3 stuff.) Then again they haven't been around in a while. The empeg was way ahead of its time and also really expensive..

Considering there are portable options that are 6 years old(iPod) and an in-car solution that is 8 years old that actually allow a user to index their song collection and easily retrieve any song with a few clicks of a button I'd expect an in-car solution made in 2007 to do at least the same. Yes, ask me to retrieve any one of my tens of thousands of songs and I can do so in usually ten or fewer key presses - it is called a fuzzy logic search(the newer iPods actually have this.) I can also search by artist, title, album, year, genre, and pretty much anything else that is contained in the id3 tag.. Also those older solutions even in 2001 offered MUCH more storage than the SOW.. Talk about a step in the wrong direction...

The only thing I can guess is anyone who thinks the mp3 solution on the SOW is actually good hasn't used anything else. It sucks. period. Wow, lots of different media options for mp3? Gimme a break. People don't want to have to switch CF cards or CDs to get their music. the also don't want to have to burn their mp3s onto a CD and then have those songs ripped and recompreseed to the HD from inside the car. As if downloaded mp3/wma/etc are already poor enough quality, to get em on the HD we have to recompress them? That's asinine..

If 9.5GB was so big then why do people still buy 80GB iPods and not just Nanos? I think at least 20GB would have been nice and done in a way where we could directly put our music onto the drive without conversion.

Lastly, I also said that until iPod integration it wasn't 50% perfect. Now it appears all is good, and that possibly explain's Infiniti's boneheaded mp3 implementation design - they knew there would be iPod integration soon anyway...

 

That point has been argued for years and proven to be a bad one. There are tens of thousands of people(or more) with music collections topping 80GB+...

 

I never said that drive was big.. of course its not in today's space but most people (in the infiniti target market) prob have less than 9gigs of music..or music they want in the car all the time.. and if they do have more.. its prob on a portable music player. just to clarify.. the infiniti hard drive capacity is around 30-40gigs.. minus OS, maps.. whatever.. now you're left with 9.5gb.

Now dont get me wrong.. i agree it would be nice if that drive was bigger but from where i'm sitting.. the infiniti system doesn't suck for most people! CF is useless to me as is that 9+gb drive as i'll use my ipod and iphone as storage.

you have way too many options for this system not to appeal to the vast majority of the consumer market. People such as yourself will always want more and rarely be satisfied unless you had designed the specs yourself.. so yea.. maybe it sucks to you.. but most everyone else will be blown away by what this system offers.. 9+ gb and all.

Storage is not the issue here.. that's why you have an iPod.. portable storage is way more convenient that a drive in your car... yea.. even the phatbox is not as convenient as an ipod is for me. I guess i'm lost at the point of this conversation.. and it's not to say your wrong.. only that you definitely speak for yourself as what i see you griping about is irrelevant to most everyone else.

Lets not forget that the company behind the SOW system (infiniti and others) did their research and determined what would satisfy infiniti's target market.. keeping in mind they had to stop somewhere as even a few extra bucks per unit adds more to the cost of the vehicle... even if its only a few more dollars for an 80 gig drive or 120 etc..

I expect it wouldn't be too difficult to upgrade that drive anyway.. so lets agree to disagree and enjoy the car.

 

Blah blah blah.......your're not getting the G37 anyways jnmunsey so I am not sure why it even matters to you.

 

i'm actually happy that they 86'd the in trunk cd changer. with space at a premium back there as it is, it helps even more. it may have been nice to have an in dash changer, but i knew it gets deleted upon ordering Nav anyway. with XM, compact flash, and my iphone, i don't think i'll be hurting for music selection.

 

Personally I'm amazed at the system and the options. almost too many. I'm not sure If I was to just use my I pod, rip music from my cds or cut a CF card. I guess it will depend on the interfaces and how easy they are to use. will be hard to beat Ipod though.

and unlike jnmunsey, there is plenty of room for all the music I want. I would actually prefer the nav system to use as much memory as it need to run efficiently and quickly.

 

If there is iPod integration, the relatively small for these days HD is not too bad. Technology changes fast enough so next thing you know 80Gb is not acceptable either. If you need more space, buy the newest 1Tb iPod or whatever that comes along, easy upgrade.

There is always a compromise between features, weight, and price ... every little thing counts. One person wants all the latest features etc. but another wants less weight or lower price ... how can any manufacturer provide it all?

I hear you, as consumers, it's okay to be demanding but Infiniti is leading in this regard. Most people who need lots of music rather spend it on something they can take it with them, not stuck in a car ... unless you live, eat, sleep G37 for which case I commend you .

 

Fair enough BostonMerlin.. You're a decent guy. I like the people who can take my crap in stride.

 

You misunderstood my post about that. I never denied people having tons of music in their music collection... but I questioned how many CONSUMERS (I'm sure Infiniti knows the market well) would want all of that music in... a car?

I understand that but exactly how many people.. besides yourself.. would really want to listen to 80GB+ amount of songs in.... a car? I barely even fill up 4GB for my "iPod nano car music". I say that if you're not satisfied... then why does it matter? Complaining about a car that you're not even buying?

 

i have nearly a terabyte full of music.. so we can agree on that one!

 

The iPod dock hopefully addresses the issue, but I am worried a similar system will end up in my GT-R...