XM RADIO ROCKS

I finally did it.... Nope, I didn't buy an iPod (I'm tempted but I keep hearing about lousy battery life)... I bought a Delphi MyFi XM satellite radio. It's way, way, way, kewl.

XM had a big promotion (complete with a huge truck-that-becomes-a-display station) last Saturday at Dave's TV -- our wonderful Millerton, N.Y. electronics shop. It was held in conjunction with our Lakeville-based radio station 103.3 WQQQ. I was driving toward Salisbury, heard the radio promo, and literally turned the car around and headed for Dave's. Talk about any easy sell, I've been chomping at the bit to get one of these.

Yeah, yeah, I mostly was motivated by my um, er, well "addiction" to Yankees games. I knew I was gonna pull out the checkbook after my last layover at O'Hare, where I was stuck for two hours, in a dead spot with no wireless access -- so I couldn't watch MLB-TV on my computer, and could only get scores on my Treo.

What's great about XM Satellite Radio is you can get every single MLB game - play by play - live. Every single game. And there's news, and traffic, and weather, and music, and it's just great. Check out this link to see programming options.

It's not perfect, but great. In the car it gets a bit spotty in some terrain -- but I'll put up with a little static. The handheld unit fits into a car cradle, and runs thru your FM radio. Outside the car, it runs standalone on batteries. (There's even a "wearable antenna" - I'm not kidding - but so far I haven't needed it.)

The Delphi radio runs roughly $300 (the price of Bose headsets) -- and I only had to pay a modest $25 bucks to get the car installation set up. The monthly subscription is $12.95, but you can push down the cost by prepaying for a longer plan. (I went for 2 years.)

The only caveat: I was not impressed with the "double play" free second radio promo -- It's not exactly free -- the fine print requires you to switch to the family plan for an additional $6.99-ish a month (per extra radio). (If you don't sign up, they hit your credit card with $100 fee.)

However, if you have a significant other or kids, it might be a very good deal. (I just the promo was just a tad bit misleading -- I thot I'd get two radios for my one account, so I could leave one in the car. But no biggie.)

P.S. Here's an article about XM's CEO Hugh Panero, from Business 2.0.