Kelleytoons

Shoot -- I must have read your original message late last night with my eyes closed -- sorry for the needless info (for some reason I thought you were asking HOW to convert FLAC). Media Monkey is still good at volume leveling, though. And as Bob says, it won't play FLAC in our vehicles so, yes, you'll need to convert. I'm not as sure about him that it will support the bluebooth playback of the converter you're using, though. When they say "support" they are also talking about playing in a variety of ways, like the USB drive insertion (which, by the way, is the method I would recommend. I started off playing off my iPhone but you get MUCH better sound if you don't use bluetooth. Yes, you will give up a bit of convenience -- I like the Sansa as well -- but since you can put even a 128gb drive in there you can store just about as much music as you'll ever have, at least in mp3 format).

I wasn't anti Prius until I drove one -- it was actually on my list to buy (at about 6 -- the C-Max wasn't even ON the list :>). And perhaps if I hadn't almost gotten killed in it (literally) I would have felt differently about it (although I doubt it). That same period of time (about four weeks while our Durango was out of operation and I was borrowing friends and family rides) I drove a big ole clunky 18 year old Chevy van that was impossible to get in, impossible to park, and drove like a slug. And even IT was better than the Prius at acceleration and handling! That was what really threw me -- at that point in time I was convinced hybrids were only for those folks who lived in Mayberry and never needed to drive over 30 mpg OR (and this last is very important) make sudden maneuvers to avoid trouble. Let me expound upon that -- if we all lived in very quiet towns where folks were well-mannered about their driving I suspect the Prius would be nearly ideal -- not fun, mind you, but a very good ride for the situation. Unfortunately, I've never lived in any of those places. Where I live people drive like maniacs, making sudden lane changes and turns in front of me that, even if I'm moving relatively slowly, require me to act quickly and decisively and, yes, sometimes accelerate quickly (but always MOVE deftly). The Prius does none of those things, unless I had it set wrong somehow or hadn't learned in a week how to make it do those things (and I'm willing to admit there may be techniques you have to learn with it to make it drive properly -- but if so, that's not a good vehicle). So totally aside from nearly being slammed into while merging onto our frontage road, I just wrestled the whal... ahem, Prius around on the roads trying to stay out of people's way. That did not fill me with confidence about taking it anywhere. So boring, yes, but also VERY dangerous in my mind. However, I also know the places I have lived and driven are very limited -- I'm not a huge traveler. I've spent a ton of time in Carson City (the nation's smallest and most obscure state capitol) and I'm currently living in one of the smaller towns in Florida (but far from the smallest by any means) and neither of those places should anyone be driving a vehicle like the Prius, although pretty obviously they are doing so. Maybe they're lucky, maybe they are much better drivers than I am, or maybe, just maybe, we are slowly losing off the people that would buy one (it might be a Darwinian thing -- pretty soon Toyota won't have anyone alive to be a customer <bg>).

Certainly not after driving both of them <g>. (We drove both our friend's Prissy's for a week and it was so horrible I couldn't believe anyone would ever buy one. Then again, maybe a test drive isn't long enough to expose just how bad a ride it really is. I wonder how many of them have buyer's remorse, though).

You can convert FLAC to mp3 with Media Monkey, but only for 30 days for free (then you'll need the paid version). If you have a certain number of FLAC files you could convert them all in that time and be done with it. Media Monkey can also balance the volume so if you are using playlists or otherwise random playing you won't have to keep increasing/decreasing the sound.

Right, and the last thing *I'll* say here (and then I'LL be done with this topic -- that's always a really great line as if you never come back and read the rest of the comments <g>) is that public opinion polls like this are, as some certain poster made reference to, a whole lot like political surveys. Which is to say they are mostly self-fulfilling prophecies that only have value IF you want someone else to tell you who to vote for. If you don't (that is, if you want to make your own mind up) then they are, as I said, worthless. +5 <bg>. (I wonder why they don't sell more cars in a lemon color. Oh, wait... )

On the newer models, like ours, you can reset the average MPG anytime you want, Eve. There is no longer a "lifetime mpg" per se. I reset ours after the dealer had driven it down from another dealership as well. I may reset it whenever my wife drives it a lot (she is... well, let's just say not all that "concerned" about mpg). You can reset your average by pressing and holding the OK button on the controls.

Or just someone who minored in Math (I will bow to anyone with an advanced math degree, however. You?)

And obviously, Eve, you were one of the ones who turned out well. (Sorry about your brothers/sisters who didn't, though :>).

Hmmm -- drone sound. I've never noticed that but perhaps I heard it and just didn't think anything of it. Don't suppose you could post a video and/or audio file? (Just have your DH or daughter record it for you while you are driving. Don't try and do it yourself!).

There are a lot of issues here. One is the data just isn't extensive enough for a vehicle that is only in its second year of production. I will admit that if you take, say, 20 years or so of data on a specific make and model of a car you may have some good results, but the problem is that most models aren't in production that long. It might be more reasonable to look at an entire company's line so that you could say, as the results do, that Ford may only be "average" in customer satisfaction but given the number of models most makers produce this is almost worthless in terms of trying to figure out a specific car. IOW, let's stipulate for a moment that all the rest of the Ford vehicles got top marks in satisfaction and only the C-Max did not. If people looked at it and said "Wow, the average is... well, average" they would be very mistaken about deciding to buy another car other than the C-Max (it's like the old joke of the guy who was standing with one foot in boiling water and the other in freezing water and was asked how he felt. "On average", he said, "I feel just fine"). Again, the old saw about the three kinds of lies is almost always true -- and statistics are indeed the worst of them.

My dad bought a lemon (to bring this back OT :>) from Ford and never bought another Ford, and passed that on to me, so I never even considered a Ford. His Ford was a 1946 Super Deluxe Convertible. Good thing there weren't customer satisfaction polls back then <g>.

On the up side (I tend to look at the positive side of life :>) at least it WAS dead at their place. Imagine if you had brought it home and it died in your garage that night. As others have said here, you have rights that you may need to exercise and be a bit of a prick about it. I wouldn't start off that way, but sometimes getting a little crazy helps. On our Durango we spent almost $2K to get the radiator fixed and in driving it to the vet for an emergency session for our baby two days later it overheated because the radiator they installed leaked and there was ZERO fluid in it. I was stranded for hours (luckily our baby was okay) but I was SO mad that I called the dealer on my cell and used words and tone of voice I wouldn't use as a drill sergeant. To say they took care of me was an understatement, but this incident was the last straw and we started shopping for Maximis that weekend. Durango works fine now (and they have called twice since "just to make sure", one time a month afterwards) so sometimes you do have to be threatening (while I hate as a general rule to invoke this, lawsuits and my lawyer were mentioned). I will never go back to that dealer, nor ever buy anything made by Dodge again (See? This is why poll results are so worthless) but luckily my Ford dealer has made up for that in spades... so far.

Well, no, you're missing my point. The margin of error I'm talking about is in the actual complaint data. If someone doesn't like the fact the repair techs aren't native Americans, for example, they may well complain about service ("I don't like their attitude"). Or the person in question might just be a simpleton (the only way to eliminate personal bias from such data is to try and match it up with liked data. Hard to explain if you have never done scientific analysis, but the easiest way to state it is if someone says they don't like (A) but they like (B) then you need to find out if their reasons for liking (B) are the same as their reasons for not liking (A) ). But the easiest way to explain this is how I said it -- these polls are meaningless. They might have some value as predictive analysis (in terms of future sales) but even that is probably unlikely.

At the risk of being scolded again for being OT, may I point out (from a scientific standpoint) that margin for error in polls like this is probably at *least* 5%. IOW, trying to differentiate between a score of 86 and 81 is mostly meaningless (WAY too many variables and slippages in the "science" involved in such a poll). Plus it's extremely difficult to adjust for things that can skew the results in ways the average person (looking at the base numbers) can find useful. Customer satisfaction for Dell computers, for example, has plummeted but it's nearly all due to them outsourcing their tech support to India. The computers themselves are still among the best bargains someone can purchase in terms of quality and bang for the buck (you *can* do better if you build it yourself, but not by much). Trying to judge the value or quality of car based on customer satisfaction for the maker is misleading at best, and almost certainly pointless.

So somehow option (2) (which is what I have) sounds better than (1) even though it's not the Sony system and only has the six speakers? I don't know, all I know is that it sounds really good to these (old, admittedly) ears. Not the absolute best car audio I've ever heard (that would be the system I installed in my Honda Prelude, in the 80's -- but without the neat bells and whistles available through MFT, of course) but really, really good, better than I've been able to achieve in any vehicle since that Honda. I think a large part is how quiet the car is inside, but I also think the system is well designed even for an "entry level" system (at least not the highest upgrade). I boost the bass and treble a bit, and I'm playing "lossless" MP3 files (files ripped at the "Insane" present). I also level the audio using Media Monkey to 89db, because my playlists are mixtures of a lot of different artists from even different recording eras (modern era artists are all hot mixed now, WAY too loud levels, and don't play nice with anything recorded prior to the last 5-8 years). The audio from other formats (FM, Sirius, Bluetooth, etc.) doesn't sound as good, naturally (it varies depending on the source) but, as I said, I consider the MP3 playback on par with almost anything I can achieve, at least portable, and perhaps better (and I have some pretty high end portable equipment).

Don't shoot the messenger, but it seems to me that if any of these problems that folks here have concluded are the "cause" of their battery issues were true, then ALL (or at least most) of us would also have them. IOW, if there is a fundamental design flaw somewhere, it wouldn't be so isolated (and thus easier to fix). That would lead me to believe it IS a bad battery or other "bad" critical part that sometimes is made incorrectly or installed incorrectly, or manufactured incorrectly, but most of the time is not. Which is why most people do not have these issues. Even though most of us here are not engineers, we have to at least stipulate that Ford's engineers (or at least some of them) are competent, and would otherwise have solved this issue long before now. I don't know how cars are made (not my field) but in computers and other tech equipment parts are often outsourced from a variety of places, which is why you can get a bad batch of, say, screens that affect certain cell phones, while other phones (the exact same models) are just fine. Again, if the problem was such that the design was flawed then we would expect ALL of the phones or the vast majority of them not to work. Anyway, just my two cents (and now I'll pull my head back into my shell).

You have yourself a good one as well (we may take Maximis out for a little trip on Sunday -- we haven't been to the beach in a year or two and this is the perfect time to give it a shot as most travelers for the weekend will travel on Fri/Sat and Monday).

Those are great observations, HB. Well, I guess we'll find out about the "two times a week" as if it doesn't get to EV+ by next week it will be proven to be false (because by then I will have surely gone to both tennis venues at least 12 times, each twice a week). As I said, I don't particularly worry about it because I'm not sure it makes much difference in the long run and, quite frankly, if the only time it ever gets to plus mode is when we come home that's "special" (since my wife only works part time and I'm retired there isn't any place other than home we drive to more than twice a week. Well, some weeks the supermarket, I guess. Have to keep an eye on that and see).

Well, there are two kinds of people -- those who divide folks into two kinds of people, and those who don't. I fall into neither group.

Well, I *never* make absolute statements.

I think the biggest variation is going to be weather (unless you live somewhere like the middle of California where it gets neither too hot nor too cold). If you use A/C or heat it will definitely affect your mpg more than almost any other variation you can control, and I think your results will get skewed as the seasons change. IOW -- until you have a full year's worth of data (which will include all the seasonal changes) I don't think there are many mods you could make that you could ever judge the impact on. But that's just my hunch.

Just to be clear -- if you paste the URL it will look as you did. You copy the link (from your Public directory) and then choose "Image" from the tools here (it looks like a tiny picture) and paste that URL into that.

You will need to share the link from your Public directory -- you cannot embed forum links from the Photos one (it's the way Dropbox has changed the way it references the URLs). For example: What I did here was go to my Public directory and copy the link and then used "Image" here and pasted that URL. Again, this won't work from Photos directory.

I assume then from the "turn the car on and off about 11 times" that that's about how many times it takes for a location to get stored. If so, I ought to be approaching this (or right at it) with both of my tennis locations (I play at two places, each two times a week, and we've had the car coming up on six weeks). For fun I'll wait and see if in the next week or two it "remembers" both of them. Again, it's no big deal but just something I wonder about (I really don't know if it truly gets you better gas mileage or not -- there's no such thing as a free lunch and I assume that running the battery that far down just means it will have to get that much more charged the next time you start off).

Forgive me for not searching, but I've been wondering about this for some time and never seen it mentioned. Does anyone here *really* know how the EV+ mode works? I understand the concept -- it "learns" how you drive in certain places you visit all the time, and then can switch to the battery and drain it a lot further down, right? But I have assumptions and questions about this. 1) It only works when it "knows" you are coming to an end to your trip, right? I mean, if it's going to drain the battery all the way down it does so on the assumption that you will then stop and the next time you start up you will then switch to the engine to charge it up again? Is that true? 2) How often does it need to have you visit the same place? The reason these two questions/issues occur to me is that the ONLY time (in 1500 miles so far, which I admit isn't a lot but it IS over the exact same routes over and over) it switches to EV+ mode for me is the very short time I get within a couple of blocks of our home. It never does so coming back over those two blocks (when I start back out) which is why I assume 1). But it also never does it when I come to a stop at any of my tennis venues, which over the last six weeks I have done dozens of times, all driving in exactly the same way (I'm a creature of habit, so it isn't as if I change the speed or the manner in which I drive, which is *very* carefully). I keep thinking that ONE day it will "know" those places but it never does and in terms of learning the route home to my garage it seemed to know that pretty quickly (within a couple of weeks of owning the car) so at this point I've been to those places at least as many times without any EV+ mode. I'm not overly concerned about this -- I get good mpg and I think of the EV+ mode as just a kind of happy bonus that reminds me I'm nearly home. But I'd love to know if anyone understands this in more detail so I can stop at least wondering.