Gasp! Gasp! Can't! Breath! Need! Air!!

Well, we've had our Prius for about 6 months now, so it seemed like as good a time as any for a quick (ok, right, nothing is ever quick with me) status update..

On a happy note, we're getting over 51 miles per gallon, and it keeps getting better (albeit slowly - the more you drive, the longer it takes to see improvements - that's how math works, oh well!), and we've had no major problems with the car.

But I do have some issues. But I'm a perfectionist - if it's wrong, it should be fixed. Here're the things that I've run into, ordered from most minor to most annoying:

1. There's a typo in the navigation software. For real. When you switch to split-screen mode, the message "Touch the right display to change it's settings" is displayed. Uhm, folks, that's the wrong form of the word its. "It's" is the contraction of "it is." You probably meant the posessive form - that would be "its" (don't believe me? look it up yourself - get it - that was a pun - look it up.. ha ha ha). I mentioned this to the service guy, but he didn't seem to care (not surprising really).
   
   
2. The voice recognition software has some "issues." Don't get me wrong, it mostly recognizes what I say (when I guess correctly at what the commands it's expecting are) which is impressive, but it's got some pretty stupid features. Take the navigation system for example. I can say "go home" and it will set its destination to be home (a block away actually, just in case someone steals the car).
   
   Neat feature. But if you say "go home" when you're looking at the radio settings, the software recognizes what you've said (it's correctly displayed on the screen) but rather than setting the destination, it says "the system is not in the correct mode for that command." Great - you know I wanted to do something with the map, would it have killed you to switch to the map and set the destination?
   
   Voice dialing has a similar problem. It should be simple, you say a name, it dials the person. It's not. You say the name, it tells you it understood, then you are instructed to either say "dial" or press the off hook button to dial. Still not too difficult, right? Here's the thing. I know that it's going to say "say dial or press the off hook button..." so Iwant to press the button and skip the message. You can't! It's another of those mode things. You actually have to wait until the message has finished playing to be in the correct mode to press the off hook switch to dial.
   
   
3. There is an extra bit of fabric on the leading edge of the sun visors. Seriously. If you look at the front edge of the sun visor, there's a bit of material sticking out, on both visors (left and right). It's not just my car, I've seen it on every 2006 model - it's as if someone decided "screw it, it's too much work to tuck the seam in" or something.
   
   
4. Some of the buttons make no sense. For example, there is a button labeled "info" on the steering wheel. When I press it, the display shows me the current MPG histogram (the last 30 minutes in 5 minute intervals). But there's also a button labeled "info" next to the display itself. When I press that, I get a menu that lets me see the trip info (the current MPG stuff), cell phone info (phone book, etc) and so on. How about a little consistency here? There are a number of good books on user interface design at Amazon.
   
   
5. The MP3 player (CD-based) is cool. Except when you stop the player mid-song (e.g. you shut the car off, switch to the radio, shut the audio off completely, etc). My four year old iRiver player remembers where I left off such that when I stop it and start it again, it picks up where it left off nearly instantaneously. The high tech sound system in the Prius seems to remember whereit was in a song when the car is shut off (e.g. 4 minutes into song 1, etc), but doesn't know how to get back to that spot quickly when you start the car again.
   
   As a result, when it starts again, the player seems to slowly seek to where it left off before it starts playing again. The net is that you can sit for almost 15 seconds listening to nothing but silence while the player figures out what to play. I had a radio in my car when I was a kid - it would play the radio while the tape was fast forwarding - if nothing else, that might be useful while the CD is seeking?
   
   
6. The damned tire pressure sensors. Ugh! WTF! Ok, nice idea - a remote sensor that detects when the tires are low. But not displaying which tire is low? That's just plain stupid.
   
   Yes, the light has lit up again (for the second time in fact), so eitherone of the tires has a leak, or maybe one of the sensors is bad? But which one? Is it a tire? Is it a sensor? Got me. but it's one of the eight (four tires plus four sensors) on the car.
   
   Sure, I can check the tires. And I will, but you'd think given that someone went to the effort of putting the sensors in the tires, and the cool wireless receiver in the car, that they could have gone to the effort of putting an LED or two on the dash saying which tire was low and how low it was.

Ok, maybe I'm petty. Is that so wrong? :)