27 Apr 10 Car handsfree/audio kits – my experiences

In a previous post, I gave an overview of a few different types of car handsfree kits that can also put MP3 players through your car speakers.  To recap, because I have a Vectra with a CD30 head unit without an aux input, I needed a completely self-contained unit that wouldn’t rely on making use of the amp in the head unit.

Unfortunately I tried a couple of different units before I found one I could live with – this was quite annoying and took a few months.  On the plus side, it means I’ve had hands-on experience with a few different units and can note it down here! (more…)

09 Feb 10 Podcasts in the car!

I’ve got quite a decent-sized music collection and I follow quite a few podcasts.  Listening to CDs in the car is a bit frustrating because I’m not very good at getting round to switching the one in the player.  Because my commute is only about 25 minutes if I listen to the radio I generally hear a few songs I didn’t want to and a few minutes of talking to whet my appetite before I have to dash from the car!

Getting a decent solution in our Ford Focus and Citroen Picasso was easy, but the Vauxhall Vectra has been harder.  I’ve tried out a the Parrot MKi9000, MKi9200, and also the iO Play – this blog post contains some summary detail about the different options. I’ll post a follow-up blog post explaining how I found each unit. (more…)