I am quite enjoying my e90 Nav, but adding addresses into the system is a pain.
I have heard that in Europe and Australia now you can enter addresses through the BMW website from your computer and they are ported to your cars Nav...but we don't have that in the US. Or do we? In Australia they call it BMW ConnectedDrive and you can read about it on their website:
http://bmw.com.au
http://bmw.com.au/scripts/main.asp?PageID=14478&PID=12
Anyone know about this, whether we have it or if it's coming soon.
Alex...do you know how this works in Europe?
|
| Reply » BMW Online (the service not the website) |
Interesting! Maybe they use some kind of a GPRS connection to the car over the BMW assist (or equivalent) mobile phone line. Would be easier to do that in Europe since there is only GSM mobile networks. I can see why it's not as easy to deploy as a general solution in the US.
|
| Reply » BMW Online (the service not the website) |
The link to BMW Oz doesn't seem to work anymore, but here is a story that covers this and a whole lot more!
http://germancarfans.com/news.cfm/newsid/2021015.001
Wow! Five pages of this stuff.
|
| Reply » BMW Online (the service not the website) |
Quote: The link to BMW Oz doesn't seem to work anymore, but here is a story that covers this and a whole lot more!
http://germancarfans.com/news.cfm/newsid/2021015.001
Wow! Five pages of this stuff. |
Great link. Now why is it that a lot of the cool stuff is "not available in the US" when it's been available in Europe for 3 years?? If you can get it in Oz, you can get it in New York me thinks.
|
| Reply » BMW Online (the service not the website) |
That would be an awesome solution to my biggest concern in the BMW Nav. Now, entering an address reminds of a computer system in 80's. Not to mention it's plainly embarassing to type letter by letter when you have a guest in the passenger seat (especially if she's Japanese  ).
If they offered such feature in the US as above (or even the TV as in Europe), I would gladly pay $2k for it. Right now, such stripped out system in the price of the best super-duper laptop or car-PC just doesn't appeal to me. I ordered w/o Nav and it makes me sad. Not because I haven't added it but because it was so bad that it made me not to opt for it.
Another detail from the article mentioned above:
- "Real-time traffic information (not available in the US)"
|
| Reply » BMW Online (the service not the website) |
Quote: | That would be an awesome solution to my biggest concern in the BMW Nav. Now, entering an address reminds of a computer system in 80's. Not to mention it's plainly embarassing to type letter by letter when you have a guest in the passenger seat (especially if she's Japanese ). | Things are not nearly that bad. The system knows where you're looking and eliminates unusable letters after every step. I often enter only a few letters to find what I want. For example I just tried entering Washington Street and it took only 5 letters. This is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater 
I would personally be more embarassed if I had to use an add-on system to my brand-new BMW to get some navigation done. Imagine a brand-new beemer with an added PDA holder and one or two charging cables, one for the PDA and one for the bluetooth GPS unit (which you'll need if you are having a long drive). You might even need a wired GPS mouse if you want to use a bluetooth phone. And data entry on the PDA would be much worse; you'll have to use a stylus (two hands, good luck doing that when you're driving) or if you're lucky and using a Treo you can do some of it one-handed, but you'll be putting yourself at serious risk in both cases squinting at the little device 
However, to each his own but I take the imperfect, pricey iDrive over the gimmicky PDA solution. BTW, I used the PDA solution for more than a year, but I was driving a '98 Altima so all that mess didn't affect its class
|
Page 1 of 6 |
Menu
BMW Online (the service not the website)