Satellite radio is addictive! We bought the Roady about 6 months ago and it's been an absolute delight. It's a tiny little thing (and the new Roady2 is even smaller). Jonathan uses it in the car for his commute, listening to techno and fusion, then brings it inside where we have the home kit set up, and I turn to whatever strikes my fancy--mostly the new wave and alternative channels. Now I'm thinking of getting a second unit so I can have one in my car, and when J. is out late.

XM and Sirius are the two major satellite radio networks. It wasn't hard to choose--Sirius is $3 a month more, and even XM's $9.95 (less if you buy a year or two at a time) already seemed tough to swallow. But boy, is it worth it. No ads (on the music stations)! 80+ music channels plus tons of others! (a station that's just audio books; another of old-time radio; a couple of humor channels; etc.) Cool specials and features, like "IT," which runs on the decades channels (40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s). IT plays ALL the songs in the library chronologically, switching channels when the next decade is reached (it takes about a week). It's amazingly nostalgic to listen to the music of your high school years in that depth.

My very favorite thing, however, is a hardware feature: the artist/track display. If you hear something you like, you know what it is--no more waiting and waiting for a station break on the off chance that the DJ will identify the track intelligibly. You can press a button to store the track in memory, if you're in the car or elsewhere and can't jot down the info. Best of all, you can preview what's playing on other channels without interrupting what you're listening to--just turn the jogwheel to see what's on adjoining channels, and press it in to change the channel (or let go if you don't want to change). There's even a way to store up to 10 tracks & get an alert when they are playing on any other station.

I find myself learning more about music just by seeing the information--I might not care enough about a song to make a point of jotting it down, but when I see who the artist is I make mental connections/comparisons. Or I'll see a song on the display that I've read about & change channels to check it out. I always liked having the track listing at hand when listening to records or CDs, and missed that about radio--not any more!

The one drawback of the Roady versus the older SkyFi is that the screen is too small to hold all of the information (station, artist, track) at once and you have to pick two of the three (although it's easy to switch). They've tried to make up for that by letting you pick a color scheme for the display--trivial but kind of cool (the buttons light up in that color too). Oh, there is a limit of 16 characters per line, so stuff is often cut off (or abbreviated strangely). The user interface is very well designed--it's a snap to learn, even though the buttons are tiny. You can preset 30 channels for quick access, or enter the station number directly.