As we all know, places across the globe are quickly making it illegal to use a hand-held phone while driving a car and Oregon will become one of these places effective January 1st, 2010. Knowing the police will be out in force on that day, I began seeking for an alternative to the earpieces. I have never been a big fan of the earpiece Bluetooth sets because it seems like every guy who thinks he's important walks around with one in his ear. But I like them even less because they're so small, I always lose them.

Enter the Parrot Mini-Kit Slim. This is a Bluetooth speakerphone that clips to your sun visor and can operate all your phone's dialing functions (including phone book entries) from the buttons and jog dial. It cost me $80 and so far, I LOVE it. Even when the car is moving, the voice command dialing picks up on the name I asked for 95% of the time and the conversation is effortless on both ends. They can hear you and you can hear them. For those with hands-free laws incoming or already in effect, I highly recommend this snazzy piece of technology.

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that is awesome! how easy is it to install? just clip on and turn on?

l've been using one of those for a while now, its great, fully automatic and no hasstle

Simple as it looks. Just clip it to the visor, turn it on and sync it to your Bluetooth phone. It comes with a USB cable so you can charge it on your computer but I just plug that cable into my iPod wall adapter and charge it through the wall.

After the initial pairing, does it pick up your bluetooth phone as soon as you (or the phone) enters the car? Do you just leave it on or is there an on/off button? How long does it keep its charge until you have to recharge it?

Thanks!

I usually turn it off and store it in the console when I'm not in the car. It will go into standby mode if the connection is lost for X number of minutes and you'll have to bring it back to life in order to have it re-sync with the phone. I don't like leaving it on the visor for fear it might dent the foam but it seems my efforts were futile. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

I'm not a big yapper on the phone so I can't speak on battery life just yet. The book claims 10 hours of talk time and 20 hours of idle time. I've had it for a week now and still haven't needed to charge after the initial fill-up.

Nicee.

Well I got the battery to last almost three weeks. After parking in the garage a few days ago, the British lady finally announced 'please charge the battery'. Those who talk more will likely need to charge it up more often.