Man I need to get my notifications working again...
As others have said, the early systems were about as enjoyable as war crimes. The newer systems are nice, such as the iDrive 6 unit I have. I enjoy the challenge and this is the first of many "one of a kind" projects I'll be working on. The iDrive screen will take up nearly the entire space in the center there without protruding, while most HU's require space for buttons on the left and right. I like the favorite buttons in iDrive. If you haven't used it, you hover your fingers over the number buttons and they serve as bookmarks. Hover to see what they do, tap to go to the shortcut, or hold to shortcut to what you currently are doing. I can be anywhere I need to be in the headunit at the press of a button. And if not, the iDrive controller is fairly intuitive and has five more favorite buttons. Still not enough? The screen is touch! The auto-brightness is great too (unlike my dynavin). If I thought there was room for a heads up display, I'd do that too.
Well put. I am putting in iDrive 6 which I am personally a huge fan of. I actually took most of next week off too to spend time on this (and my fuel pump replacement). iDrive 4 in pre-LCI F3x isn't bad either, but iD6 is a pretty decent leap.