Big Smooth

My order still hasn't shipped. The Roady2 is OOS at many retailers (and Amazon is not even taking orders anymore), so they must be in short supply. I've still got 3 weeks to receive it and send off for the Home kit so hopefully they can get it to me by then. Otherwise I'll have to break out the

Actually, if I remember the thread correctly I think he turned it over to them as part of the resolution to his problem. I think they agreed to replace his wheels/tires but they required the rights to that domain name.

Remember when UnixFreak (I think that's his name) over on AT made a site called f***lesschwab.com? Heh heh.

I dunno Ross, Les Schwab's customer service is typically unbeatable. It's good enough to get my repeat business even if Costco might beat them on price. Normally I wouldn't say that, but I've always had great CS at Les Schwab (they've fixed flats and rotated tires for me for free on several occasions).

I finally gave in & ordered this on the 10th, no thanks to you, Brad. It hasn't shipped yet, but the delivery estimate is 9/23 - 10/4. So I should receive it in time to send in for the Home kit. Only problem is that I am leaving the country for two weeks for my honeymoon on 10/3, but hopefully it will get here before that. Really looking forward to getting it, virtually everything I read about it (and XM's service) is positive.

Hmmm, only problem I see is that for the free home kit, you must purchase by 9/12 and then send in the rebate form by 10/12. Amazon says "1-2 weeks" to ship, but who knows how accurate that is. God knows Amazon has been way off on their shipping estimates before. Tack on another week for super saver shipping, and it's possible you would be past the rebate postmark date. Not likely, but possible...

Cool, good to know. I'm seriously considering this.

Just curious, Brad, but if you could ONLY have either XM radio or a portable mp3 player, which would you choose? I've been thinking about buying an iPod or something similar, but I used a friend's car with XM for a week and I really liked it. They have different uses, obviously, but which is more indispensable in your opinion?

Seems like a really tempting way to get into XM. So you really wouldn't need to buy anything else to use this in your car and at home, right?

Mostly similar to that, yes. Using price search engines, I have seen them for about half as much at a few random stores, though, but as I said I was not sure if they were reputable. I really don't want to spend $30 each.

Wondering if anyone knows of a good online store for Jazz LPs on Vinyl. Specifically, I'm looking for John Coltrane's Blue Train and Miles Davis' Kind of Blue as gifts for a friend of mine. Both of these have been reissued at some point but I think they are currently out of print. I'm actually looking to get them framed so I don't care if they're new or used as long as the record cover still looks good (and I am obviously trying to keep the price down). I found them at a few online stores but I don't know if they're reputable. eBay's my fallback but I thought I'd throw this out there on the off chance we have a jazz fanatic here.

That $175 price is ridiculous! No one in their right mind would pay that much considering the price at other stores. Plus, there are a lot of attractive alternatives at $175 or a little more.

Just a caveat... http://www.epinions.com/pr-SmartDisk_Rover_256MB_MP3_Player/display_~reviews

Brad, thanks for the info. The SKYFi 2 sounds sweet. Tune Select, sports scores, and the integrated FM Modulator all sound like features I would definitely want and the buffer would be cool as well. :)

Hey Brad, I know you're an XM guy... what improvements have been made on the new version of the SkyFi receiver?

The price on these seems to be dropping like a rock. My guess is that demand is down due to the HD-based players with 100x the storage getting better and cheaper all the time. These small flash-based players do have their advantages, though.

Very tempting. Wish it was the "FM" model, though.

Mixed reviews on the Zen Xtras at Epinions.com as well, although they're generally positive. 30GB for $179 is very cheap.

Yes, I think it's recognized as a USB mass storage device so you can just drag-and-drop.

Yes, it plays both mp3 and wma. Looks like you do have to use MusicMatch to transfer songs to the player. Depending on the bitrate of your files, I'd say you could fit about an hour's worth of music on it (15 songs or so). Edit: read a few more reviews, looks like you don't HAVE to use MusicMatch, at least not with XP or Mac OS X.

Well, I'd rather have an iPod but I ain't gettin' that for under $30.

Yup, back of the sports page on Wednesday as always. It's definitely a stripped-down model, no bells and whistles at all, but that also keeps it small & light with good battery life. I can't decide if I want one myself, the price is very low but it has minimal capacity (and I'd rather not buy an SD card).

The Portland-area Fry's ad for today lists a 64MB RCA mp3 player for $29.99, no rebates or anything. The picture clearly shows this Lyra model, which gets good reviews on Amazon, Epinions, etc. No backlight and it doesn't hold much but it is expandable with an SD card. Seems like a good price for a very portable, basic mp3 player for the gym, jogging, etc.

That's probably it, my phone supports most WML (most common WAP language IIRC) and it does support xHTML, which is the new standard. Thanks for looking into it.

Just a note... I have a newer cell phone (a Motorola V300), but I can't access mobile.gottadeal.com with it. I get a "page cannot be displayed" error, but I don't know why.