MacSid

I'm with Miinty on this - it took so little time to get used to that I was surprised, especially after all the bad press it got. It took a day or two to really master the shortcuts and remember how/where my most used functions are, but I was up and running using it within 20 minutes at the beginning.

info@trinityautosport

half an hour or less. i love the idea of one knob controlling everything

BigMike

Really simple to me. I work with computers all the time (music producer/arranger). I like Idrive but there are a few things I wish were added and/or could be retrofitted such as being able to hook up radar detectors directly to it so we don't have to have it hanging all over with cables stuck here and there.... (Yeah, StealthOne was real cool but they disappeared off the face of the earth for some reason).

swajames

Interesting to see some of the posters here don't have navigation (or have business and not professional navigation). That gets to the heart of many of the iDrive issues - navigation, and most specifically professional navigation, is by far the weakest link. Prof nav cars are slower, and the navigation functionality itself really isn't up to standard, particularly on anything pre LCI. FWIW in my Porsche I can get the destination or POI up and running in a fraction of the time it took on my E60.

rmcd

I have nav on my 2004 - bought in 2005. I'm also a computer geek and early adoptor of technology. That said I found trivial to understand the concepts of the idrive for getting around the system. Nav took a little longer to get the hang of. It's clearly the weak link. We won't talk about missing functions.

I think it's brilliant and really increases driving safety. Once you learn how to use it, you can glance at the screen and control the whole thing with a flick of the wrist. You don't have to look around the dash trying to find little buttons like I do on all the rentals I end up getting.

JetBlack5OC

It took a few days.

I have a couple of friends with the touch screen navi systems and I definitely prefer them over the idrive system. Plus the idrive graphics are starting to look out-dated compared to other systems.

ressla

swajames has hit the nail on the head. The idrive on a pre-LCI car with prof navigation is horrendous.
I also have to disagree with many people here too who think that the idrive is intuitive enough.

1)The fundamental problem is how slooooooow the bloody thing is . Commonly there is a 2-3 second gap( often more) between movement of the the idrive controller and any response from the machine. This ,aswell as being annoying as hell, is dangerous as you find yourself checking the idrive more often to confirm the required option has been reached.

2)Often I find the idrive doesn't respond first time and the movement needs to be repeated. More distraction.

3)Even more irritation occurs when the idrive "freezes" usually for about 10-15 secs in the middle of a move. (My Idrive loves doing this when changing from one audio source to another eg FM to AUX , it will get stuck on AM for ages and not even let me play the AM either!).

4)And I've never had a car before where the passenger can't change the radio station or even find how to change the volume easily ( on/off/vol knob not even labelled).


5)The navigation is so ludricrous I don't even know where to begin...

In short the slovenliness of the system is it's downfall. It's not the fact that it isn't intuitive enough ( although that may be the case). A lack of intuitivity is not a big deal as long as the bloody thing does it's job quickly. Sadly the idrive in my car is the only that lets my driving experience down.

In my opinion BMW have tried too hard to avoid cluttering up the dashboard with buttons and sacrificed ease of use.
They need to look at Audi's system which works alot better IMHO.

Hopco

Let me add my kudos to the comments of swajames. I consider myself to be quite computer literate. The first machine I programmed was an IBM 709 (tubes), I then moved onto the Navy where I worked with early DEC machines. Then to Wall Street time sharing followed by the Apple II where I programmed an analysis of the UK Petroleum Revenue tax that took 14 hours to run - BTW it takes less than 1 second on my current PC ? anyway I hope you get the idea . . .

The I-Drive is a great concept ? but poorly implemented IMHO on my pre-LCI E61. When I used a loaner for my prior BMW, I thought the naysayers were wrong about the I-Drive. It was simple enough to program the radio and use the Bluetooth cell phone.


However, Navigation and even Climate menus are a muddle IMHO. 1)The navi menus are counter intuitive (it took me weeks to find the way to get "information" and then one has to scroll to find what one wants by distance rather than alphabetically. 2) Make it easier to change the auto-vent settings ? one always has to arrow over.

BTW it took me less than 20 minutes to figure out my iPod. BMW should hire Apple (hey, they don't make cars and BMW doesn't sell computers) to design the user interface on the F10 and then use a CPU that is much much faster - and even include a Hard Drive for storage. Let's hope the execution is better when BMW is offered a clean slate.

tomv

Just a few hours at most. Took longer to remember where a few items were hidden. Most 5 owners like idrive and don't give it much thought, very easy to use. It's the car reviews that seem to love trashing it; but don't they get paid for drama and controversy anyway..?

alpinewhite

5 mins. seriously.