As I mentioned in a previous thread, I have purchased a new Honda Fit, with Navigation. The Nav system comes with an integrated stereo that has an impressive feature that surprised me.

Maybe I have been out of the loop so long that this is old news and everybody has it now, but the stereo has a USB connection that allows me to plug in a flash drive with music on it and control the playback through the steering wheel controls. There is also a PCMCIA slot that lets me use (with proper adapter) various memory cards like CF or SD for the same purpose. I can also plug an iPod into it, but not my iPod, only certain models are supported.

The UI is nothing like an empeg (no surprise there) as it is a flat database (more like a Karma or an iPod) but I can sort and select by album, artist, or genre (maybe a few other things) and play tracks in order or shuffled, with the MP3 tag information displayed on the Nav unit.

Is this a pretty impressive thing, or is it common on new cars these days? This is the first car less than 10 years old that I have owned in decades, so I haven't been keeping up with the new technologies.

tanstaafl.