[Spaceman]

Originally, I spec'd my car without Satellite radio, but my salesguy found me a car that is already on the ship with all the options/color I want and the extra Sat Radio pkg. My other choice is to build a new order, wait for 8~10 weeks for delivery. So I opted to pay the extra $$ and get this car that's already on route. My reasoning is, if I don't like it, I can stop the service after the 1year prepay is up, and when I do sell the car later, the Sirius pkg may be important to some buyers.

After using it for 2 weeks, I can understand why some people are dissapointed with Sirius, the sound quality is not great, but not bad either. In some areas where the signal is strong, it sounds really good, but for dense tracks like Rock, you can hear some failings in the sonic quality. But more often than not, it does not bother me, and during the rare times it does, I just switch to another channel..

So what made me decide to keep it?
1) Traffic updates. Sirius dedicated channels to traffic updates in metropolitan cities, like LA, San Diego, San Francisco.. etc. I am fortunate to live in LA, but I certainly hope that they continue to expand to more cities.. During my trip up north, I was able to tune into traffic updates, including 2.40 in the morning (I think its 24hr service), where it correctly told me of a freeway closure on the I-5. I tuned into the station a little late, and was caught in the jam nevertheless. However, had I checked earlier, I could have taken surface streets.

The next morning, while navigating to Venice Beach from the SF Valley, I tuned into Sirius traffic and found out 2 accidents that was on the 101 East bound and the 405 Southbound. Both accidents were NOT reported on the FM traffic updates I usually. I tuned into the FM stations for 10minutes to see if they will mention it later, but did not hear it. Regardless, because of this info, I took surface streets with the help of my Navigation. Bottom line, love it.

2) Coverage. Never do I need to tune into another station when I leave town since Sirius is satellite radio. Which means, no more country music for me when going thru the desert to get to Las Vegas.

3) Great channels / selection : One of my fav is Chill channel. This is the perfect station to "chill" out. Its one of these channels that play atmospheric jazz/ relaxed ambient music. On long drives, its indispensable. There's also 3 classical channels and plenty of news channels to choose from : CNN, NPR, BBC etc. Nothing like a good dose of British accents after crumpets & tea at Santana Row, San Jose. There's this one British lady (host of a serious talk show) on the air late at night (on BBC or NPR talk) that sounds like she's ready to keel over.. it's hilarious.

4) Program information. This is one of the coolest features. It shows the song names/ artists of the song currently playing on the channel. I suppose when RDS for regular radio stations comes out for people with I-drive, this point will be moot. But for now, its great for I can instantly get information whenever I happen upon something I like on air.

5) Lifetime upgrade. Been hearing about other members saying that Sirius is offering lifetime subscriptions til jan 2006. For us BMW owners, we get prorated for 1 year since its already paid. Great news for people who intend to keep their cars for more than 3~4 years, bad news for people who crashes their car often..

So in the end, I've decided that I will keep my Sirius radio after all, perhaps checking into this lifetime upgrade deal as well before the offer ends.