This is a guest post from Robyn at RobynsOnlineWorld.com for our Back To School Connection campaign.
You all know that I strive to keep my attention on the road when I am driving. With Taylor have a leaner’s permit right now I want to instill how important that is to him as well. Texting while driving is a complete no-no for us. However, there are occasionally times when I am waiting for an important call or something on my iPhone (we only use cell phones at our house now – no land line at all) and if I’m in my car I still need to take the call. I needed some sort of hands free Bluetooth solution. Taylor offered me one of his over the ear thingies and I tried it, but I just do not like that thing hanging over my ear like that at all. Plus, it interferes with wear my sunglasses are around my ear already and everyone that knows me in real life knows that I always have sunglasses on my head!
While I was at BlogHer I was watching tweets from the event and saw some from @Parrot_US about their Bluetooth product for in your car that didn’t require the ear thingie. Hmmm, interesting. We tweeted back and forth and then met up at the conference and they offered me a Parrot Minikit to try out when I got back home. As geeky as I am, when it comes to car related stuff I usually ask Hubby to step in, but for this I asked him to come and watch in case I had any questions. We headed out to the car with the kit and my iPhone to set it up. It was super easy, basically just tell the two devices to find each other and you are done. You can also sync the Parrot Minikit with the iPhone (and other phones) with all your contacts by just pressing a button. Again, super easy to do. The hardest part was figuring out where to put it because while the kit comes with a clip thing for your sun visor, my car’s visor was too thick and it didn’t fit on it. What I do have on my car visor though is this little slit pocket – I don’t know what it’s for, maybe a parking pass or insurance card or something – but the clip slid into that easily and that is where my Parrot Minikit now lives.
To use the Parrot Minikit I just press the button and it says “who would you like to call?†and I say something like “Hubby Cell Phone†and it calls him. If I just say “Hubby†then it asks if I want to call his work number or cell phone number even. Very cool! When a call comes in that is in my contact list it announces the name, as well as rings on my iPhone and it rings through the Parrot – trust me I’m not going to miss a call. This does not go through your car speakers though which I like because it scares the crap out of me when that happens if I hook things up different ways. I also like the fact that I can record the names of people on my own so it’s easier to understand (my unit was made for the UK so it has an English accent). Now the best thing that makes this great, especially for back to school time for teens, is that we can sync up to five phones on this one unit! We only have three, but still. This means that no matter who is driving the calls will be able to come through the hands free Bluetooth Parrot Minikit.
The Giveaway: One lucky reader will win a Parrot Minikit!
Please Note: You can only enter at Robyn’s giveaway post.
Robyn’s Disclosure: Parrot provided me with a unit to review and one to giveaway. The opinions are purely my own. Transparency is everything!
You can find all of our Back To School Connection giveaways here.
