In the interest of trying to narrow down why 2 X5's built in April do and do not have this feature:

Mine is an X5 3.0. I have the premium and technology package. COuld one of those packages be the difference?

My Apr07 build 4.8i has the knob resistance. All options but 3rd Row Seats, Prem Sound and Rear Entertainment.


Jeremy

for those that do 'not' have the resistance... does the knob still produce the 'clicking' feeling when scrolling through menu's??

:iagree: :iagree: :iagree: :iagree: This should be a no-brainer option in the iDrive-driven menu...

Here's an excellent article that provides the answer:
http://stage.bmwcca.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1240

Great article and great explanation, thanks for posting.
Being the starter of this thread and also being the one initially missing the feedback option, I can now confirm that what is written in the article is true. Especially with the USB option where you quickly want to scroll through long lists of songs, it will indeed operate better.
When BMW gave me a loaner recently which still had the force feedback in it, I noticed this clearly.

It proves that while it originally sounded bad, its not so bad after all.

So the problem is not so much in the design and the decisions made, it's the communication within BMW which never seems to arrive at the right place.
No-one knows about it when you ask and they struggle to find the answer, while in fact this answer must have been there from the start.