a newbie introduction and one question.

[Pinaos]

Hi everyone.
I have been just lurking here for a while and finally picked up my own ’05 X5 4.4i (less than 10k miles, SP, and AP, CPO) a week ago. All the messages on the board were really helpful and I learned a lot from them. I have been very much surprised by the maturity of everyone on this board. To make a long story short, I had to drive up north with ’02 330xi for about 600 miles and come down to MD with ’05 X5. I really liked my 330xi but the expansion of family would force me to get a bigger car. I hesitated little bit between XC90 and X5 but it did not take long to reach the final verdict as a BMW enthusiast. When I first picked up X5, I felt little uncomfortable because it was a big car compared to 3 series. To tell you the truth, I was little disappointed due to less nimbleness. When I was driving 3 series, I felt like I was wearing well-tailored suit. But I felt like I was wearing extra roomy pants and shirts at first with X5. However, I could tell X5 is much more luxurious car than 3 series. I drove for 30 min after picking her up and I parked in the garage for 2 days until I left for my home. Finally, a long journey. I was very nervous because I heard about a big snow storm in east coast area and I had to drive X5 with summer tires. I couldn’t postpone my departure and I decided to head down. The car seemed to have a lot of power but because of bad weather I couldn’t really try anything. When I reached around NY, the road was bad. Especially, I-287 was not cleaned at lot on Sunday. To my surprise, my summer tires were decent enough to get me through in the snow storm. Luckily there weren’t that many crazy drivers and I grew up where the winter lasts 6 months so that I knew how to drive in the bad weather. Of course, I am not saying that you don’t need winter tires as long as you have X5. I am a strong believer of winter tires for the winter and I don’t recommend having summer tires for snow season at all. The one thing I was surprised was that when I drove 330xi (SP) for long time, I felt little bit of back pain but X5 SP seat was very good and so comfortable. It has been a week now with X5 and the weather is really nice for last a couple of days. I started to like much better. As one week old X5 driver, I feel something (very very very little something) is missing compared to my previous car and maybe I miss my old car too much for now. I think that it is not even fair to compare x5 and 330xi because those two are totally different cars. I remember reading that if you had another SUV, X5 is blessing but if you are coming from another BMW, you might be little disappointed. Hence I decided to test drive MDX tomorrow. Only thing really bothers me now is that I can hear stuff in the trunk moving. I think that I have to get something like a luggage net. Also, my steering wheel vibrates little bit at idel. I can feel it from my seat too. But I am going to ignore it for now. If someone asks me whether I regret getting X5, NO WAY. It's the best SAV you can get. But I think that I might get 3 series again in a year or two as a small fun car for me.

Finally, I have one question. My car came with BMW iPOD connector. Can I leave my iPOD connected or is it going to drain the battery? I remember somebody complaining this and I just want to know what everyone is doing. I don’t want to find it out in a hard way.

Thanks everyone…