My wife and I love the I-Drive. Prior to buying the car we heard that it was a pain to deal with. Once we figured it out we found it to be a great feature.

It's a love-hate relationship

I am a professional embedded software engineer.

I think i-Drive is just ok. Menu system is not as intuitive as I would expect. I can imagine those who are not intimately familar with computers have some degrees of problems with it.

It is so slow.....

it's easy to use though..

I can see myself growing extremely frustrated with how slow this thiing is. After a few days in the car I am already annoyed with the slow boot up and slow response to input. Maybe some day we will be able to replace the CPU or upgrade the memory on the thing. It seems so foolish to build an interface this slow when the cost to put more power would be minimal. I have to assume the reason has to do with electrical power needs for faster processors.

I do think the forece-feedback controller is brilliant, however. Some may not have realized that all of the resistance points and vibrations are artificial, to give you non-visual cues to your position in the menus.

chicks dig idrive

I-drive: Great concept, horrible execution.

I could deal with the less-than-ideal menu system, if the thing wasn't so damn S .... L .... O .... W.

Despite the obvious question (why doesn't BMW spend a few extra buck to give the thing enough computing power), what really surprises me is that they would produce a vehicle feature that, because of it's slowness/unresponsiveness, becomes a real distraction when driving. Instead of keeping my eyes on the road, I have to keep looking back at the screen to see if my last input was actually accepted, just slow at processing, or ignored altogether. Eventually someone is going to be involved in a serious accident while messing with this thing. (BMW lawyers, are you listening??)

Instead, they think it's more important to put the "Accept" screen at startup.

I'll take the iDrive over a Denso touch screen unit any day. That's not to say that there isn't room for improvement.

We live in a day and age where computers are so powerful, it is mindblowing.

Not only are computers more powerful than ever, but the prices are low, too. Yet BMW can't seem to spend a few bucks to install a decent amount of processing power into a $70,000 car? I just don't understand it. I didn't buy a BMW to skimp money. So I don't want BMW to skimp money making it.

I mean.... how much could it cost on a unit basis to install a powerful CPU? $500? $1000? I'll pay it, BMW. You hear me!!!??? :whistle: