Concerned about the placement of the AUX input

I currently have about 45GB of digital music loaded into itunes that I listen to most of the time. I keep it all loaded on my 60GB iPod. I primarily use the iPod to listen while flying commercial flights. We also spend most weekends travelling to the coast... and I set up a Bose sound-dock to hold my iPod in the condo. I also have another 280 GB of digital music on a portable USB hard drive that a co-worker "gave" me. I have not loaded any of that into iTunes because 1) I prefer not to use illegal music... I do not own the source music for these songs.. and 2) I really do not want my music collection to grow larger than my iPod... because I dont want to have to decide which music to take with me... and which to leave behind.

I am considering a iPod Nano as a second device to use while traveling. I am torn... because I love the the long battery life... but I do not like the prospect of deciding which music to take with me. The beauty of my regular size iPod is that I have all of my music.

Personally... the ideal would be if my car had a built in digital music player in the radio (mp3, AAC, etc)... and a built in hard drive. I would like it to to automatically "wirelessly dock" with my digital music collection every time I pull into the garage. This way... my entire music collection would be available to me wherever I am without the hassle of a portable device in the car.

In my other car... I listen to Sirius almost all of the time. I like the variety, and i usually drive with the information screen on the display so that I could read the title/artist information. I often times use this information to purchase more music. It works out well for me. As soon as the Prius is available with a satellite music receiver that displays all 32 characters... then I plan to add it to the Prius too. With satellite radio, and a built in music collection... then having a CD player in the car becomes totally obsolete IMHO.

There are other places that I just don't listen to music to very much. At work... I tend to be in and out of meetings all day, so I do not bother to try and keep my music with me. Likewise in my plane... I have a CD player that plays MP3's built into the panel, and I just keep a single CD in there with 100+ songs. I generally do not listen to music while flying anyway... I prefer listening to ATC. I do have an aux port to plug in my ipod... but I never use it. I would probably like to have sattelite radio there... but it just has not been that important to me.

What I am really waiting for is for iTunes to start offering a digital music subscription service. Then I could move away from ever "owning music" and instead choose to "rent music". I am currently doing this through Yahoo Music and it works out really well... except for the fact that Apple does not license their DRM to Yahoo... so the music cannot be loaded into my ipod. I do not expect Apple to change their licensing model anytime soon... but I do expect that they will enter the music subscription business eventually... and I will be one of the first people to sign up. In the meantime, I use Yahoo music to listen to new music... and then if I like it.. I will purchase the CD to have a permanent copy.

/Jim

 

I am on the record for saying that the Belkin connector is best adapter for the iPod in an '06. I am changing my recommendation

I bought two of these Belkin adapters and first installed one in my daughter's Prius... and it seemed to be working fine in the short time that I tested it.

Then when my Prius arrived... I tried another Belink adapter it in my car and I was very dissasified with the results. I would get a horrible buzzing sound depening on the gain of the Belink amplifier. At some settings I could minimize it... but I could never eliminate it. Currently I am using the iPod with just a patch cable with good results. Of course.. I am not charging my iPod... so I have limited music time. I cannot get the Belkin connector to work reliably in my Prius.

/Jim