If you were planning on getting one in the near future be aware:

Stock is being pulled off the shelves of my local retailers and being returned to the vendor - both Fry's and CompUSA have denuded their shelves of this product over the past couple of days. CompUSA states the item was "discontinued" but my iCruze support guy said a new version is/was due out this month.

Also, if you want one anyway and find one in a retail outlet be aware that the MSRP dropped from $249 to $149.

I don't know yet whether the product was discontinued or recalled to fix some "issues" with the firmware - many of the units out in the marketplace have really old firmware revisions that just don't work right with some vehicles (like the S2000 dash controls) and need to be upgraded at the factory. The last update I got was *almost* good enough. I'm awaiting the very latest version to test if the remaining bugs are finally exorcised. I just thought I'd let everyone here be aware of what's going on.

Additionally: I've had two LCD units fail. Once during a really hot day with the car parked outside, and the other on an 80-degree day at about 10 in the morning. The car interior didn't get above 100 degrees on that day. Anyhow, the LCD failed by refusing to show any track info at all and was completely dead aside from the backlight. Monster is replacing the dead units for me, but they don't appear to be able to take the heat of a car interior even though that's exactly where they need to be.

 

The tech I worked with wrote back. It's not "discontinued". They are doing a refresh and updating the firmware and re-releasing the iCruze.

 

Yea, I'm still waiting on my updated firmware iCuze. Its taking them quite a while to fix these bugs. If I knew the iCruze was going to be this much trouble, I would of just hooked it up via a PIE Aux wire.

 

[QUOTE=typeszh,Oct 13 2005, 11:07 PM] Yea, I'm still waiting on my updated firmware iCuze.

 

do you think we should crosslink this thread to your other icruze thread? the other one is a link in the FAQ, and i wouldn't want this info to be lost...



and bitching about soccer moms in SUV's using cellphones is one of my favorite passtimes....


as an aside, i added my MP3 player (Creative Zen Touch) to the Alpine, and suddenly i'm very keenly aware of what you mean by it being a distraction...

 

The new "V.2" iCruze came Friday and I have to say they made a real good effort at improving it. I still need to check all the bugs I found in the earlier versions, but at least this thing is waaaay faster than the previous versions I've tried.

Provided I cannot lock it up with an empty playlist or a playlist with fewer entries (long story) it's a winner as far as integration with 2003 or earlier HUs.

The optional LCD is still up in the air since they cannot seem to take the heat of being in a car on a sunny day.

 

Let me settle down on this unit for a while then we can discuss how to update the thread for the FAQ. I just meant this to be a "heads up" because I saw something "fishy" going on at several retailers.

 

*nods*

 

I just got my updated iCruze unit. Now I can put the Ipod on random and still be able to skip through songs. The unit is still slow to react to the dash controls. Atleast their tech support is quick, too bad their product and engineering isn't the greatest. I wonder how people are doing with the Neo device that works similiar to that of the iCruze. For that comment about the PIE connector, I just put my iPod on random and just skip through the songs. Rarely do I scroll through it to look for a particular song. I'll update this thread too after some more time spent with the new firmware.

 

I don't really think all of the problems with slowness are the fault of the headunit or the iCruze.

The new iCruze isn't slow at all. What does happen is that occasionally after skipping some songs or switching playlists the dash or radio controls need to be hit several ties to get it to go to another track or switch o a different playlist. Usually the iPod is queueing up songs at this time and it may be the bottleneck.