[SamAdams76]

I recently bought a new car and it has a USB port for an iPod. As soon as I plugged in my iPod, the menu showed up on the screen on my car radio and I was able to navigate my playlists and other music right from the dashboard!

So I loaded up one of my older iPods with 120GB of music and have it permanently stored in the car - I might never need to use the CD player again!

Also, because the iPod is hardwired into the stereo system, the sound is exceptional. Far superior to the wireless FM transmitter solution I had earlier where you had to tune the FM station to something like 88.3MHz and deal with static all the time.

[krb]

Also, because the iPod is hardwired into the stereo system, the sound is exceptional...Far superior to the wireless FM transmitter solution I had earlier

That's because the broadcast people lobbied the FCC to reduce the transmit power of those devices to nearly useless levels.

A lot of them implement the power reduction via a "pi" network. If you know what you are doing, you can take it apart and remove the shunt elements and short out the series element and get a tremendous improvement in quality. (and be breaking the law)

[zeugma]

Far superior to the wireless FM transmitter solution I had earlier where you had to tune the FM station to something like 88.3MHz and deal with static all the time.

Yeah, that sucks. When you're out in the middle of nowhere, it works o.k., because you can find dead air, but in large cities, you're kinda screwed. What would be cool, is if we had one clear FM frequency across the country that could be used for this type of application. Unfortunately, since it wouldn't make any  money to the government in licensing fees, it's not going to happen.