Love that interior (and looks like you have already dropped some new wheels on her?). I did not know the e60/61's were yet shipping with the new iDrive. In the US I have seen cars with the new iDrive controllers - but they still run the old iDrive. BTW - I notice two new buttons on the steering wheel (right side) that I do not recognize from my 07 M5 - what are they for?

Congrats. A nice Christmas present!

Thanks jjdnyc. It's wintertime here so the car has Nokian RSI winter tires on rims style 243 (all pictures except the last one). Summer tires are on the original (Exclusive Edition) rims style 277 (last picture).

In Europe all E60/E61's produced from week 45, 2008 have the new iDrive controller with the new iDrive. Mine is produced in week 47.

The 2 buttons on the steering wheel (right side):
HDC, Hill Decent Control (Only on X-drive cars) See this link:
http://www.bmw.com/com/en/insights/technol...nt_control.html

The other button is for the Lane Departure Warning system.

Hi, very nice car. I like all the options you already have.

I'm getting my new E61 next week, also with the new iDrive.

I can't wait and I'm preparing my music collection already. I have some questions on that.
- Do you how many Gigabytes the iDrive really has for music files (until now I'm getting mixed info of between 8 and 12 Gb)?
- Can you really play m4a files from this hard disk as well as the dvd-drive?
- Do you know if you can play music from Double Layer DVD's?

Have fun with your new car!

/Eric

Congrats on the new ride and welcome on board!

The colour combination looks, well, exclusive! Love the look of that new iDrive.

Enjoy!

Hi Eric, thanks. I really don't know how many GB's the hard drive provides for storage of music files. I have also heard both 8 and 12 GB. The manual doesn't say anything about it. This is from a brochure I found on the internet somewhere:

"The hard disc drive provides 8.0GB storage for audio files.
Music can be stored on the hard disc from three sources:
- Audio CD
- Data CD/DVD
- USB device in data port
Usable storage capacity on the hard disc in 7.6GB, this will hold circa 2,000 songs at 128kbits/s."

The manual says that only files with format WMA, MP3 and AAC can be stored at the hard drive. This is also valid for the CD/DVD drive.

Yes, you can play Double Layer DVD's (both DVD-R DL and DVD+R DL) according to the manual.

Thanks gjohn,

That's exactly what I read in the pdf's that are available. Would love to see or hear experiences, but I only have to wait an extra week. I will definitely try all options.... I have a disk full of podcasts I would like to have available in my car, but it would be a waste to put them all on the harddrive, so I'm thinking of copying them to DL DVD and use the harddrive for other music.

Bye!
/Eric

Congrats on the car gjohn, looks really nice with that combo!

Hi again, Today I found "Memory Available" in the Option menu in Music Collection. Total memory available is 12500 MB.

Great looking car. Interior combination is lovely. Also, brilliant choice in music! Dire Straits... LOVE Mark Knopfler!

Yes, Dire Straits is great :D .