Yes, another poster lamenting the all too familiar customer service woes. Suffice to say I've switched to XM and dumped any holdings.I'll regard the bard: "Brevity is the soul of wit".~AX

My el-cheapo MP3 player fizzled and I was in the market to replace it. Going to the gym just does not work without my jam bands.I chose this because I absolutely DID NOT want an iPod. We receive satellite free via Dish Network and had been toying with subscribing. This seemed like the perfect solution.We had absolutely no difficulty installing ourselves, in fact, cannot believe people pay to have it installed! I purchased an additional cable for $20 at Best Buy that keeps my signal steady. MP3's are easy to load. I especially love the fact that I can record songs that I hear on the radio--a perk that hopefully the RIAA will not take away from Sirius in court.Sound quality is great (I have a really nice car stereo). The unit is solid and I have had no trouble at all with it. In fact, I plan on adding a home dock through my stereo, and an additional car dock for our non-commuter car.I can't wait for our 6 hour drive to the beach!

Purchased the S50 about 2 months ago. First the volume button randomly went up and down. Next I dropped it on the road while running and the dislay cracked and is now black. It worked for about a week more then totally died. Technology is way behing XM as they have a portable unit with satellite feed.

The portability of this device coupled with the ease to plug into a car base or home base are truly amazing. The display is big, colorful and easy to read while driving. While in portable mode, it is ultra light and slim and can easily fit in my palm.There are a few things that could be better with functionality of the device but hopefully these will be addressed with future firmware upgrades. Example: if you turn off the device while you're listening to a recorded MP3 it doesn't bookmark where you were so when you turn it back on you have to navigate back to the file and start at the beginning. For single songs this is not a big deal but for those recording 2 hours blocks of various talk radio shows this could be a mild frustration.

This unit was a Christmas gift. I have three main comments.1) Core programming: Excellent - 150 stations, commercial free. Needs more international music (African, Carribean, etc). Grade: A-2) User Interface: Very confusing and counter intuitive menuing system. Grade: C-3) The unit itself: Drives me nuts. Sometime it turns on immediately, more often, the unit powers up but it can't find a signal and sits silent. Only extensive fiddling - unplug the power, plug it back in; turn the unit on and off; remove the unit from the dock and remount; and then finally, for no apparent reason, it powers up finds the signal. I swear I will have a car accident trying to fiddle with this thing while driving. Grade: D-

I love SIRUS and the S50 is great when it works but has so many problems. The system is very dependent on software. The upgrades fix one problem and but create a new problem. In particular, since the 3.15 software update, just about every unit it was downloaded to has got the dreded "No Signal" problem. Technical supoort says nothing can be done until the next firmware update in 2 months -- I would recommend no one buy for 2 months until the problem is fixed.