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Best iPod Car Adapter

The short answer: for most, the Griffin iTrip is the best.

Questions about Technology

I get asked questions about stuff. Sometimes, the answer might be useful to other people - so why not share it here... Like this question about car adapters for ipods:

> I want to buy a car adapter that lets me play my iPod. I know how the iTrip
> works, but also assume there are lots of other options. What's the best in
> your opinion for large city use? Do you know of sources I can review
> (consumer reports is one, but any other reliable tech source)?

The iPod Lounge (now iLounge, due to busy Apple lawyers) has these kinds of reviews: http://www.ilounge.com

iPod Car Adapter

I think the best ipod adapter really depends on your car situation:

  1. Own the car and it's the primary one you drive - take it to a stereo place and spend $50 on something that will directly plug into your radio
  2. Leasing the car, or want to use your iPod to feed to a stereo in lots of different situations:
  • If you have a tape player, get a tape adapter - better sound and the possibility for the tape fast-forward/rewind buttons to do something to the iPod.
  • If you have no tape player or want to be able to play your ipod through your friends cars/stereos - get a radio adapter. The big drawback being frequency problems in media saturated cities. My favorite radio adapter is the Griffin iTrip

Some of the devices have integrated chargers. I don't frequently drive for more than 6 hours and
that's my current iPod battery life. Between my iPod and Nikki's, we probably have 15 hours of combined battery life - so that's not really a problem for any trip we might reasonably take. Given all that, I don't like the idea of the car chargers because my suspicion (valid or not) is that quick charge/drain cycles like on a daily commute will diminish your overall battery life. I know new batteries aren't supposed to be susceptible to this...but when there's a class action lawsuit about the iPod battery life why not just be a little more vigilent in caring for your batter?

As to specific models - I'll leave that to the folks at http://www.ilounge.com who do it for a living. I just don't keep close enough track of the current models.

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Comments

Free Podcast Directory

Hi!

You seem to have a pretty popular site here. Maybe you can get us an Ikea in Portland, OR? I need a new bed!

I have a free driectory for lisitng podcasts. What makes it a little different is you can lsit or find them by using keywords OR categories. A mention from you folkd would be nice!

Griffin

I've been using a Macaulley Cup and the reception etc is fine. The only problem is that the cup barely fits into the cup holder in my car (Citroen), it does fit just not as tight as I'd like because I can't push it down fully into the recess.