Retail Therapy

During my trip to Penang I realised that I really did miss my old ride... especially the ICE (In-Car Entertainment) setup. Here's a portion of a flyer I made when I was selling the car.

The car I'm driving now has the stock system in place and the car is 7 years old now so you can imagine what kind of crappy stock system it was. When you travel interstate and listen to the radio then you have a problem  as the frequency changes and you would need to retune to get the right frequency. The stock system had its limitations when it comes to preset stations and the same applies for auxiliary inputs which it did not have. So it was either a CD or mess around with the tuner while driving which is not a good idea when driving alone. In my old set up, you can see there were 6 presets and 7 pages of it which means I could preset a total of 42 stations. I did the same presets of stations but each page was for a different state. Convenient. And in the old set up I had an auxiliary input which I could hook up to my phone or an iPod. It was also my handsfree then... I spoke into the phone while the callers voice was from the car's system. Cool...

So, the thought of upgrading was already playing in mind while in Penang.

This morning someone really spoilt my morning while at work so I decided to do some retail therapy and also 'skive' for a couple of hours.

You guessed it... I took my car for an ICE upgrade. The goal was to change the head unit as the current one was faulty (volume dial cranky) and did not have an auxiliary input and could not play MP3s and also to upgrade at least the front speakers and my budget was not more than RM1k. I decided to use just one brand for this set up and Sony was what I chose. I did it with RM845 which included RM30 for the workmanship.

Head unit: CDX-GT290S. It had the front auxiliary and was MP3 and WMA capable. The guy did his best to upsell the other options which was AAC capable and also USB capable. It was tempting but I stood my ground. Auxiliary is all I needed. I have a phone with 8GB of memory so that's all I need.

Front speakers: XS-GTX1620. I wanted components for the front and this was the only option available.

Rear speakers:  XS-GTX1625B.  I'm on a budget so coaxials it is.

Again the guy did his job and tried to sell me an amp and a sub. At least he tried but I know what I am doing and this is all I am willing to spend on this car. Everything is done now BUT I am really not happy with the installation. As I was skiving and running out of time, I just let it be for now and I guess I will have to take it elsewhere for a better job and also some insulation work.

At least now the music sounds decent and the radio definitely sound so much better and more crisp. Still a long way from my previous set up but so was the investment. Hahaha... you get what you pay for just like the workmanship... RM30... so I got shit.

Oh... and this is my dinner. Tuna Aglio e Olio. I just love pasta... yummy, yummy...