I've had XM for a couple years and I too experience dropouts when in heavily wooded areas. This only occurs in a couple areas in my 85-mile daily commute, and only for a second or so. I drove from Northern Virginia to Atlanta over Christmas, and never lost the signal. My daughter did most of the tuning. She likes to pick the comedy channels, and different rock channels. I stick with a few channels that I have pre-set. I've never had a problem with a long lag while scanning. I never listen to FM in my VX any more, and there are no AM stations that I ever listen to.

I got XM because they had NASCAR, and I even bought a boom box so I could listen to the driver radios while watching the race on TV. Unfortunately, there is so much delay in the XM signal, that the radio feed was useless, and annoying. The boom box has been relegated to the garage for those times when I'm waxing the VX.