Shawn Sorichetti

For Christmas I received a Magic Bullet, and the first thought of testing it was to make Strawberry Daiquiris. This plan was hampered by a lack of rum in our house, and at the liquor store. Who would have thought there’d be a rush on rum on New Years Eve?

Next test idea, salsa. The plan was to have nachos and cheese for dinner, with a little fondued meats, so salsa made perfect sense. Plus we had most of the ingredients except for fresh cilantro, which was easily fixed.

First attempt, Salsa Puree. I managed to get the Magic Bullet stuck in the lock position. The ingredients were a little more blended than I wanted, but boy did it taste good.

Second attempt, I tried the “Shake ‘n Pulse” method described in the manual. My technique needs a lot of work. Ended up with part puree part big chunks of tomato.

Third attempt was a little more pulse and a little less shake. This again resulted in a puree. Tasty but not the consistency I was looking to achieve.

Luckily all of these attempts were tasty and we ate up all the puree that I created. Tomorrow we shall try again (fajitas for dinner), allowing me to practice my “Shake ‘n Pulse”

What a waste of money. The iTrip has proven to be completely useless in my car. No matter what station I set the radio to, no matter if the iTrip is set to LX or DX, the signal is weak and I can’t hear a thing unless the radio is turned all the way up.

When I left for work this morning a took a couple minutes to set up the iPod to play over the car radio via the iTrip. After several minutes of trying multiple new stations as well as the ones that worked with my first generation iTrip, I had to give up, or I’d spend the morning stuck in traffic.

Before leaving work, Trush and I tested the iPod and iTrip with his car stereo as the iTrip had worked quite well with the van, maybe there’s something wrong with my car stereo. We managed to find one station where the stereo didn’t need to be cranked in order to hear.

As it was getting late, I went to my car, tuned in the station we’d found, and couldn’t hear a thing. Increasing the volume over 80%, I could hear some sound but I wouldn’t want to leave the volume that high. As a test I moved the iPod closer to the antenna, which is in the rear of my car, and the music was clearer, but still not as clear as it was in the van. The difference: the antenna in the van is in the windshield, Trush’s antenna is in the rear but is a shorter car, and mine is right in the back.

The transmitter in the iTrip is not strong enough to make it to my car antenna with any power. Checking around, there have been a number of complaints of the same issue. With this, I will never buy another Griffin product again.

I previously purchased an iTrip for use with my first generation iPod. While it worked as advertised, living in a big city made it hard to find a clear station and I grew tired of the music fading in and out or popping.

For Christmas Linda gave me a Griffin SmartDeck. While this worked great for my iPod Mini, it only worked in our van, as my car does not have a cassette player. So, while I’d take my Mini with me to listen to in the office, I also carried my first generation iPod and iTrip for the car. Even though the quality was horrible, it was still better than listening to the radio.

Unfortunately we began to notice a problem with the SmartDeck. At random it would skip to the next track, or wouldn’t stop skipping all tracks until ejected. Then came the demise of my iPod Mini in the hands of the washing machine (must remember to check pant pockets before putting them in the laundry basket). For those keeping score this is the second device I’ve lost to the washing machine, the previous being a mobile phone.

During the mourning period for my iPod Mini, Linda picked me up a new 30GB iPod (video). While this was a welcome replacement, it also sealed the doom of the SmartDeck. The interface on the 30GB iPod is dock connector only, whereas the version of SmartDeck I’d received connects to the iPod remote connector found on the iPod Mini and probably 3rd/4th generation iPods. This left me lacking the ability to play the new iPod in both the car and the van.

Today I made a quick stop at BestBuy to check out their iPod peripherals in hopes of finding a SmartDeck with dock connector, or a good quality mini jack to tape deck adapter. The sales guy there strongly advised me against a tape deck adapter stating that the new iTrip would sound better than any cassette adapter, and the technology had improved enough that even in a city with no station free channels the iPod transmission would be clear.

Sure enough when I started using it in the van on the way home, first station I picked I was able to hear the iPod clearly. This is way better than the first generation iTrip.