My 2 cents - Eco Drive

Hello people, let me share some thoughts on Eco Drive.

Before you even think about it, DO NOT INSTALL. I might be a little selfish with the environment but you will (sorry for the language) f**k up Blue and Me and Windows portable altogether.

Why? Simple. Because the "PDA" inside your car cant handle MP3, keeping track of driving and Connecting your phone by Bluetooth.

Install problems you might have:

Turning the key with all installs is not everything and it will not install it properly, sadly you have to start the engine and keep it started. Other than that everything should go Ok.

If you only light up the dashboard you might kill your PDA.

How do I get the music working?

Well you had some mp3 on your flash drive and now you can throw it out of the window. If you plan to install Eco Drive buy a new flash drive and do not break your favorite flash drive.

Removing the "iFiat" folder from the drive or even formating wont help at all, that flash drive has been marked and cannot read and write at the same time (playing MP3 and recording drive data).

Turing Eco Drive Off will not help, after 15 seconds from start music will stop and nothing.

How to get the music working? Buy another flash drive and use that for music. Hopefully you are not using your 8 Gig drive just for recording drive data (that could record nonstop 2 years).

Problems after Eco Drive virus

- Music skips from time to time
- Bluetooth disconnects sometime, but alltogether works fine
- 8 Gig flash drive is useless

How to help?

Well none yet, uninstall is not posible. If i ever get my hands on some source CD's from MSDN we will see.

Only 1 post on this on the official forum with no remarks from the helpdesk

Save CO2?

Dont drive like a maniac, dont tailgate and if you drive like me in the city your consumption in jams is 20 l/km since I have a turbo.

Or get the Eco Drive, your choice.

In contrast to the above post:

I have had no problems installing or using Ecodrive, playing MP3's or connecting to my phone on any occasion before during or after installing Ecodrive.
I have had no problems with the memory sticks I use several in the car only one of which has the iFiat folder on. When that stick isnt being used the car happily stores the data in its own internal memory untill i next put the correct stick in and it then updates the data on the stick for up loading to the computer.

Make your own mind up whether Fiat released a memory stick destroying program or a usefull software package to monitor driving style.
Personly I want a MPG for each journey to be easily retrieved.

Ditto. I use a single 16GB memory stick for playing music and collecting Ecodrive data without noticeable problems.

Had no issues with ecodrive what so ever. As for the MP3 front - I just convert everything to wma and have never run into any problems with it.

As for the usb drive point - it can't permanently break the drive, not logically anyway.

I'm not disputing the OP has had problems , but I've had no issues with EcoDrive and a USB stick that has MP3s on there as well as doing the recording.

Getting the B&M to work reliably with my iPod Classic is another matter though

Sadly looks like this effects only me. Aaaarchhh. Why meeeeeee.

Have you tried to reset blue&me? whip the fuse out and try again.

Now I've not had the degree of issue that the originator of this thread, but i have had some issues. Quite often, within about 30 seconds of startup, the media player will 'stick' and then the whole B+M System would reset, re-start ecodrive, media player and re-connect to the phone.
Since eco drive is not telling me anything i don't know already I turned it off, problem solved.
I guess there is some truth behind the to much to do at once thing. Perhaps later Bravos had a memory upgrade It's the usual thing to throw at troublesome Microsoft products