Well, she's parked outside now; it's only slightly more than 48 hours. Just some reactions...

- I picked her/it up Fri. morning; about 1.5 hours at the dealer. I was treated honestly and felt respected, definitely 5's.
- We'll do BMW Assist in a couple of days, after they have a chance to receive my paperwork and my plates come in.
- I did a Lojack and am very curious what they did and how they did it.
- Everything seemed to work, including voice control. Voice control didn't go very well for me, but I haven't given it much time yet; not sure about its learning process. Trying to set frequency 92.3 only worked one out of about 15 times. I'm not impressed, yet.
- The trunk is really nice; a definite step up from my '00 540i. I especially liked having three storage compartments, including one hidden one. That's not including the spare tire well (pics follow).
- I couldn't see any windshield washer fluid in that long neck, and also couldn't see where the tank was, so I'm not sure how to know how much is in there, other than waiting for the bell to go off. They told me it was full, but shouldn't I be able to see some in the neck?
- I have to lean way in to reach the oil dipstick; I liked it's positioning better in the 540.
- I had no foul odor from the a/c today or yesterday.
- Orient Blue is GORGEOUS + FANTASTIC! I couldn't be happier with that selection.
- Steering is rock solid. I was curious about the different feel from the 540i (rack&pinion vs recirc. ball), but I need more time to compare/contrast. Definitely happy.
- One of the differences that struck me the most was the auto's tendency to downshift when I lifted my foot off the gas to coast. There is much finer control of engine speed with this transmission (Step.) vs the 540 (reg. auto).
- I thought it was really cool that my Nav DVD was labelled 2004.2. I wonder how recently it came out; what do others have?
- It wouldn't let me show radio stations on the right side of the idrive screen. I thought I had seen pics of that somewhere here, maybe Lomag's. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong. Map, nice and big, on the left, and radio stations on the right? Apparently not possible with 11.1?
- Service told me either my car had 11.1 or the current version was 11.1 and therefore my car had it; not sure which.
- I was not expecting a first-aid kit in the toolkit, but there it was! I thought this was one of the non-DOT approved items they took out at the VPC. Cool (here's to not having to use it!!).
- Nav worked flawlessly getting me to a few places, but refused to shut up when I was on my way back! She kept telling me to make a u-turn like I forgot my wallet at the place or something! The 540 didn't do this. I need to figure out how to quickly shut off guidance; maybe there's a voice command?
- There was not even a hint of wanting to charge me anything for the nice floor mats. He didn't say anything and neither did I (duh).
- The odometer had 10 mi. on it, which surprised me. There was sort of a poll on another board for the e60 and it was most always under 5, usually 2.5 to 3. Even more surprising was that my CA told me it was almost all before he got it, i.e. factory and/or vpc.
- Speaking of the VPC, they were MUCH faster than I expected. BMWNA said 3 or 4 days, usually. 6 weeks ago or so, all the e60's were held up there for almost 2 weeks waiting for software. My baby was reported off the boat by the shipping company at 8:20 p.m. on 5/12 (Wed.). She was then reported dropped off at the dealer, by the dealer, around 3:00 p.m. on 5/13 (Thurs.), 40 or so minutes away). That's 19 hours, 20 minutes, for heavens sake! I thought that was kind of amazing.
- My CA gave me two nice bmw keychains, with the dealer name/phone engraved on the back.

Thanks much and sorry about the length...just some reactions. I've got some pictures I'd like to post, and they showed up easy to view (no horizontal scrolling needed) when I tested them in the test forum here. The only thing I'm not sure of is that I think I've got too many. There's some 30 or so that I think look really good (appropriate humility included) and I don't know what to do. I'll see if I get any advice when I got home later this evening. Thanks much.

Sam

sj3, congratulation on the car.

Quick couple of answers to your points:

1. As far I know you cannot get radio info in the smaller of the two windows.

2. To mute voice instructions, press and hold (about 3 secs) the nav button on the steering wheel. You'll also see an struckthrough audio symbol appear on the map if you have this active.

Hi Sam ,Congratulations .... interesting reading ... but where are the pics?

Pic1

Pic2: ORIENT RULES!

pic3

pic4.

pic5.

pic6.

pic7. Place for contraband! ;)