TECH-fidel

Cadillac keeps bragging about the big hard drive in the new CTS. I have one question- how do you fill it up? The answer- slow and painful, unless you really pay attention and get a little lucky. (If you just want the right answer, skip to the last paragraph).

First, the hard drive is 40GB but after you install the navigation system, 10GB is left. That is still enough for lots of music, podcasts, and audible.com (only) audio books.

Any music has to be in the mp3 format and DRM is not supported. What this means is if you have an iPOD loaded with iTunes music, it won't play on this system. The DRM will not let you convert from Apple's format. Now if you have bought some apple DRM-free tunes, you can convert to Mp3 and load onto something else and transfer to the caddy. Yeah- I see that happening.

If you use a store like eMusic instead, you could have all DRM-free music and play your library in the caddy and on anything (yes, even the iPOD). I use eMusic and it's about 25 cents a song. They just got all the really good Rolling Stones music, too- 1964-1970.

So what will people really do? Just play music on their iPOD plugged into the system. Or a CD. Or XM. Or even AM/FM. No hard drive needed (except for navigation). Oh, and how do you update the nav system? Manually, with news discs. AARRGGHH!

If you do want to fill the 10GB with music, you have a more manageable problem but what a hassle. 10-15 trips with an Mp3 CD or memory stick will solve it. We're talking about 3,000 songs- you will be wishing you put Mp3's on your iPOD.

Now you can also record an hour of AM/FM/XM onto the hard drive. The quality will be horrid. AM/FM to mp3, anyone? This is like when in high-school I used to make tapes off the radio. It worked but I can't imagine why you want a $3,000 system to play low-quality music. I guess the iPOD has turned everyone's ears to mush and if you don't hear compression artifacts, you probably think something is wrong with the music since it doesn't sound right (to you).

How does the auto industry get this right? Your car has to talk to a network. A wifi card would be a start, but not a good one. You could download music from your home network, assuming you park real near your house. But what service do you use to access your media? There is no "wifi provider" that offers services (and never will be). Maybe you could use Universal Plug and Play, but no one does. The right answer is a pervasive wireless network, like Wimax or EVDO ( or EVDO Rev A.) with a service provding access to your media through the Internet. High-speed data, no software to install at home (maybe a browser plugin), and meeting your needs. This is more secure, too, and ultimately provides a platform for real in-car services. You could download video, make VoIP calls, download updates for your nav system. The advances in this area over the next few years will be truly amazing and more importantly, more useful than a 40gb hard drive that is hard to fill.