It seems incongruous that someone who willingly spent ~$1500 for a really good car stereo is now trying to save nickels and dimes on another one, with little regard for the quality and usability of the end product.

Ahh, *I* would spend the money in an instant, but this is my girlfriend we're talking about. As I said originally, there seems to be a roughly 2X cost difference between equivalent quality CD head units vs. MP3-CD head units (assuming Aiwa and Jensen have similar quality in their low-end products -- the specs all look comparable). My question was meant to be whether the next-generation MP3-CD head units are beginning to solve the problems that the first generation had (e.g., lack of ID3 support, lag time when skipping tracks, etc.). If not, then it seems sensible for her to save the money and get a perfectly good traditional CD head unit, which would make her perfectly happy.