I picked this up at my local MINI dealer today.



It's 8GB so it will hold both Italian Job movies for plugging into a laptop to play.

 

that is soo swt how much ?

 

Cool Beans

 

I wish the US dealers carried it.

 

I was told it lists for $65CDN. My dealer was selling it for $55CDN. Since I have a good rapport with the dealer and am a member if the local MINI club, I got an additional discount. So just under $50CDN for an 8GB stick.

There is a thread by Jamesday24 of MINI collectibles. He has this on the third page back with price listing of 39 Euros

 

Too bad they don't make one like the 2002 MINI key.

 

nice idea..

 

Neat idea... But $50 for an 8GB memory stick is just asinine, I don't care what it looks like.

 

US dealers do carry it....$45 US

 

Now if you could get them to upload a backup of the engine management system and a shop manual to it, I'd buy one in a heartbeat. But for storage of the "Italian Job", Office Depot has 8 Gig sticks for 14.95 and I'll never mistake them for my real key fob. Sorry.

 

Also available online for $45: http://www.minimotoringgear.com/#/PR...?CenterId=null

 

Yup...the link just takes you to a "local" mini dealer...........

 

Just got my Mini a few weeks ago. It does have the interface.

Will ANY USB work with this, or am I limited to a Mini-Stick, so to speak?

Never mind, I'm obviously a moron regarding this car. Feel like one anyway! Grrrrrrrrr. I am NOT buying an IPOD! ;-)

 

There are a couple of threads here concerning the use of USB flash drives and mini-USB drives and a quick search should pull them up. I read a lot of the posts after I first got SJ and it appears that the USB I/F is slightly finiky on which USB devices it will use. I originally tried a compact flash adapter that I use to transfer files for my Crackberry and SJ would not even recognize it. Apparently the I/F has a limit on the amount of current it will let a device pull and the CF reader as well as most of the USB devices with the mini-hard drives exceed that. I ended up purchasing a Kingston 16 GB from TigerDirect and it works great! I use it a lot when I'm out on my stress-relief drives or when I get tired of listening to the radio station. You do need to make sure you format the drive using NTFS since the MC wont read any other drive formats and you might want to look at the MP3 tags and cut them down to a minimum such as title and artist. One thing I've noticed is that the playback picks up exactly where it what when I switched over to another input source no matter how long it has been or if the car was switched off. This would make it quite useful if you transfer audio books (almost wrote "books on tape", showing my age!) to MP3 and listen while you drive. I've transfered quite a few audio books over to MP3 so that I can listen to them on the BB when I do my morning torture (err exercise) sessions and I wish the BB could keep track of where I stopped playback since it is pretty hard to get one or two tracks to fit exactly into 30 minutes.

 

To add my two cents: the MINI key fob USB does not fit in the USB port mounted at the base of the center column in your car. Several people bought the fob for that reason and were disappointed to find there is not enough room.

The USB / key fob is cool though!

 

Ksaim...thank you for that tidbit of info, because I, for one, did NOT know that!

My boss bought me an 8GB iPod today...and I doubt I'll ever fill it up! Thanks again to you (and all) for the info. I've always been kind of "geek-like" when it comes to technology, but have resisted a few things...and am assimilating now.

 

If you like music, you will love your iPod, I still have my first gen iPod, though in our family we have 4 others (one each). We all love them!!

 

You're right. I'm already loving it! Have learned (quickly) that the iTunes store is a dangerous hangout.

 

As a follow up to this, having used it for awhile now I noticed a partial reason why this thing is so expensive.

I put movies on my stick and then play the movie back through the USB port on my netbook. The other day I loaded 4 movies from my iMAC onto a Sandisk USB stick and it took about 7 minutes to do so. I did the same thing on my MINI USB memory fob and it took about 2 minutes.

The data transfer speed on this thing is noticeably faster, especially for very large files. Whether it's worth paying that much more for the faster transfer speeds can only be decided by the person considering getting one.

 

My dealer has it for 35

 

I just got the 8GB USB drive as compensation (as well as some other items) for the shipping company taking too long to get my car from PA to my dealer. I have not tried it in the car yet but if you buy a USB extension cable it should work - at least it worked in my 2009 BWM 1 series which has the same audio system as the MINI - just in a different package. I have been using a 1GB drive in the car to load up a few CDs to listen on. You can arrange the music by Artist, Album and Song on the USB stick and then navigate through the stick using the menu on the radio.