Sunday, February 05, 2006

XM Radio Better Than Sirius

Well, I went and done it. Actually I did it yesterday--bought an XM satellite radio. I had been looking at them on the web trying to figure out the best one for the best deal. I decided that I should get one that could work at home and in the car and if was portable enough for camping or office. I still have a few months left on my SIRIUS subscription that came free with the Jeep, but I really missed Fox News and several other talk programs that were canceled from their lineup. Also, XM offers MLB and NASCAR. Anyway, decided on the Delphi XM MyFi / xm2go portable which comes with kits for home, auto or Walkman style use. The list had dropped to $224.00 and XM is offering a $50 rebate for this model. Then stopped at Rex and that was their price as well. Then found an interesting website called xmfan.com that had lots of discussions on the various models and sell the same kit for $149 before rebate. Almost ordered it, but at Walmart with Nelda I checked and found they had it also for 148.88 before rebate. I couldn't wait any longer so brought it home and installed it with the home kit, which includes a stand, AC adapter; separate home antenna and cable to connect it to my AM/FM radio. It works great.

Next, this afternoon I tried putting it in the Jeep. It comes with a seperate cradle and several different mounting brackets, a separate car antenna that attaches magnetically to the roof and a DC plug in power adapter. I put the antenna just above windshield on outside of roof and routed wire around windshield in the crevices and into the dash area using black electrical tape to keep wire in place. The problem was figuring out how to mount it on my dash. Not real pleased with any of the brackets that they supply but settled on a clip on that fits over one of the dash air vents. Again radio works great, played it through the FM radio on 88.7.

Finally tried it with the ear buds and internal antenna walking around the yard. Not so good as it drops out when turning away from southern sky. But if stationary it works ok. From the discussion web they talk of a clip on antenna that provides a better signal, so may have to invest another $20 on that.

Bottom line is I like it but need to find a better way to mount it in the Jeep. Probably need to go to place that installs audio systems in cars and have them look at it. What we go through to keep up with technology!