Did you recently take on (or consider) a loan of 84 months or longer on a car purchase?
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People tell me that they can barely hear me, and that I sound a million miles away....when using the hands free phone.
However, I am not sure this will fix your problem. It will certainly help _you_ hear better, but probably won't help the person on the other end to hear you better.
PS - when speaking with someone in person, do they often ask you to speak up or repeat yourself? :P
Now, this freeze is bad enough that even the non-Navi related functions cease to work. For example, the Audio butto doesn't work. I can still adjust the volume but the Navi and the dashboard LCD screen won't display the new volume setting.
Restarting the Navi-system (by completely turning off the car and turn it on again) solves the problem, again, like rebooting your computer would solve a computer freeze.
I had taken it in to the dealer and dealer said they have never heard this problem and don't know what to do with it.
Has anyone else seen this? A potential Nav software problem?
Thanks
I really expect embedded systems to perform better than a personal computer though. E.g., do you expect your stand-alone DVD player to freeze up from time to time? Probably not. But would you be more tolerant if your DVD player on the computer freezes from time to time? Probably.
Just curious, have you guys spoken to the dealer about this problem? Would a updated Nav software (hopefully less buggy) would alleviate this problem a bit? The problem is annoying when you don't know your way around...I meant, isn't that the point of the Nav system--to guide you? Can't guide when it freeze. And you can't simply reset it. You would have to park the car, turn off the engine, and turn on the engine again. Major pain in the butt compared to hitting ctrl-alt-delete on your computer :P
I'm sure that's good advice. In a prior post, I mentioned using a lense-cleaning cloth. To be clear, I'm talking about those cotton/poly cloths that they sell at (sun)glasses stores for you to keep in the case with your glasses - not the throw-away tissues that need a spray cleaner.
Thanks,
Jen :confuse:
The TL's nav is top-of-the-line, w/ maybe the Infinity M being the only car out there with a better 1. Here' a quick review:
NAV POSITIVES - The nav part is great - it's easy to enter info; there are many ways to enter info, from using a business' phone # (think about it, you're more likely to know the phone # than the formal street address, aren't you?), the nearest intersection, the actual address or the place's name (ex - "HOME DEPOT"), and you can do so with voice (can't input street names this way), touch-screen or joystick. The system gives you clear directions, has a button for you to press in case you didn't hear them or want the system to repeat and has clear illustrations of how to proceed. If you miss a turn, it recalculates quickly.
NAV NEGATIVES - the negatives with the system would be the same as with any system. Primarily, once the DVD is made, any future addresses, places etc that come out after it is made are not on it. My DVD is 3 years old. It won't have a business on it that's been around less than that. Similarly, if a business moved or closed less than 3 years ago, it'll have the old address. This has affected me several times, as its directed me to Sports Authorities that were no longer in business and to my doctor's old office (he had moved a year ago). :sick: Also, if a road was widened into a major road, but the system doesn't know it, it will still think of that road as being minor and may direct you around it. There are also certain quirks that I cannot explain except by example: if you've ever used mapquest, you might notice that for some reason, it directs you in certain ways that might not be the most direct, easiest, etc. The TL nav has those same quirks and on the same exact roads on which mapquest has its quirks, so I think it might be universal. For some reason, it always has me travel about a mile out of my way to pick up the local hwy. Mapquest does this and the TL nav does too. Since I know the area, I know to ignore it and it recalculates automatically. If I didn't know the area, I wouldn't know any better, but would just be travelling an extra mile or two. Even when not using the nav to plot my rout, it's much easier or me to use the nav to see what roads are around me than to strain my neck looking for street signs.
INTEGRATION: I'm not a business travelor, so I don't need the nav all that much, but the fact that the voice recognition is integrated into the climate control and radio is fantastic!!!! I don't bother searching for the right buttons to change the temp settings - I just tell the car and it does it. No need to take my eyes of the road or hands off the wheel. Same with radio stations. The car has radio controls on the steering wheels, but once I scroll through the stations, it's much easier to say "cd, play disc 2 track 7" than to repeatedly hit the "mode" button or find the cd button on the dash, then find the right disc #, etc. And if you want to try a station that's not preset, just say it!
Here's another example of how the nav system makes my daily life easier: I'm using a tool Sunday eve and it breaks. I get in the car and head to home depot, halfway there I realize it might not be open, so I look it up on the nav, call the phone # it gave me, and turned out home depot was closed, so it saved me a trip to a closed store. I change directions and go to Wal-Mart b/c I know they're open, but realize that from my current position, I don't know which one is closer - I punch it up on the nav and get it to direct me to the nearest Wal-Mart. On my way, I realize that even though they're probably not open, I'm more likely to get what I want from a hardware store, so I ask the nave system to give me a list of hardware stores and 1 by 1 I call them. All closed, so I kept going to Wal-Mart, but if 1 had been open, the system would've directed me there, and I would've had the person on the phone so he could hold what I wanted at the front of the store.
PS - Wal-Mart didn't ahve what I wanted, so I ahd to go to Home Depot on Monday, but that's not the nav's fault, that's just my luck!!!
I'm new here and just starting to look at replacing my 2000 Passat GLX. The TL is one of the cars I'm looking at, and I'm also trying to decide if Nav is worth the cost. Is it not possible to get DVD updates? If not, the system will get progressively out of date -- fine if one is on a 24 month lease, but not so fine if one plans to pay cash and keep the car for a longer period.
Back to the off-topic mention of the Passat. This was a wonderful car, but a fully-loaded Passat (like mine) bumps right up against the cost of a fully-loaded TL. Amazing.
What's amazing about this?
No, I was actually trying to say that a (fully loaded standard) TL is near to the price of a (fully loaded options) Passat, but as nice as a family car as the Passat is, the TL is really in a higher class, and a great deal.
PS - I had an '01.5 Passat GLX before my TL. I think if you're the type of person who appreciate the balance fo the Passat (balance between sportiness, luxury, safety and utility), you'll love the TL. FYI - some things my TL doesn't have that I miss from my Passat are the rain-sensing windshield wipers, moonroof dial instead of buttons and real wood trim (TL's is fake). The TL is still a much better, much more enjoyable car.
When you're at your home address, program the location using the "current location" feature. As an aside, my home is relatively new and my system will find my address, but since I live on a double-lot, the location it has for my house is about 1/20 mi fr my driveway, so I may need to reprogram it that way, too.
Instead of just a dvd player, why not add a burner and make the CD learnable?
I can't see nav.s approaching this - the system would be either be too complex or it would be too easy for people to input wrong info. I think the future is more likely to bring wireless web updates to a hard drive, rather than a DVD or instead of writable DVDs.
Also I live in a kind of a developing town within central TX, and the nav won't find certain businesses that I know for certain that have been there for more than 2 years.
Not sure about that particular circumstance, but sometimes I have trouble entering the right name. Meaning some places on my local Martin Lutehr King Jr Bvd are listed as MLK; some as MLK Jr and some spell the name out fully. Then, some use N,S,E,W designations. With businesses, maybe it goes by a corporate name rather than what's on the sign? Remember, if your searching via telephone # (my preferred method), even if the business has been around, if they changed phone #s recently, it's not in the system.
I'm going to check what version of the DVD I have....not sure but might be an old version, which would be unacceptable for a new 05 car.
I bet you can play with the system to find this out, but it might be easier just to pop the dvd out and look at it (it's in the trunk). BTW, if it's more than 1 year old, it's certainly worth complaining about, but keep in mind that there's going to be a delay between the time the info is input into the DVD and the time of production and then distribution.
BTW, another drawback with developing areas is that if a road is widened and would provide a more direct route, the system might still recognize that road as little and direct you around it.
Still, I think these glitches are universal and the TL's system is 1 of the best, so enjoy it! :shades:
We got our 05 in late feb 05 from a dealer in colorado springs co. they were on backorder for the TL's at the end of 04. When I bought mine they had many in stock and I am pretty sure all of them have navis. It was only a price difference of $2000 to get it and I have done a lot of driving in new areas (9000 miles in 4 months) and I have had to use it and its great, My car was robbed in June in North Bergen NJ which is about 10 minutes from NYC. The cop said the robber was maybe trying to get the navi but i dont understand how anyone without a TL could use it...? fortunately the idiot robber who left jewelry and a checkbook in my car cut themselves and bled in my car and my navi was safe to see another day... ok TMI sorry... but the navi is great. just dont park it where its in a busy or bad area without cameras to moniter it! :shades:
Anyway, I never installed an aftermarket nav system, so I don't know what one looks like, but would suggest you try lying it on the "shelf" under the back window until you find a permanent place. Yes, the roof and sides of the car are metal, but I perhaps the signal can come in through the windows?
Did you consult with the dealer with the problem?
Also, the data comes from companies that rely on aerial or satellite photography. If you search some places that have a good growth of trees, there will be places where they cover and conceal a road. You will not be able to even FORCE your system to guide you over these routes.
Sometimes you will hear that the routes have been certified. They do send some crews out, but my guess is they do it for "POI" - points of interest. This means commercial establishments with phone numbers and street addresses. I have come across the trees over the roads three times in one year in two states.
I wish they would ask me, because I believe the systems should have a radical change. They need to be the size of tablet PCs and optically they ought to be like the newspaper programs that show the whole format of a newspaper page. This would "greek" the small print -- it would show and you would know it is there although too tiny for you to read it UNTIL you zoomed in on it.
As it is, almost no street names show on my system unless I am down to 700 ft resolution. If I go out to 1/4 mile to try to get some orientation, I see almost no street names at all.
If anybody knows how we can get some feedback to someone who can change these things, please post it.
It had been a minor annoyance for me that during daytime rains, I had to go into setup and change my nav brightness setting from "auto" to "day," and then change it back in the evening (b/c my night setting was too faint to see during the day). Knowing that the max rightness button will automatically switch it back to the day setting temporarily has made those daytime rains a little les annoying, and I wanted to pass this on.
Or just click the "max brightness" button to brighten the display or
click the decrease brightness button to make the display darker.
Thanks,
Clarence