E60Sim

I love the I-drive..

It's like the Danish television and soundsystem company Bang & Olufsen, which make so nice design and very good systems.

The I-drive takes about 1 hour and you know all the details about it.

Look at the pictures below, the new A6 which is a nice car, but look at there version of I-drive, looks terrible

// Simon

marty530d

Personally I like the iDrive although I do sometimes yearn for a single button to do some things (such as skip to next CD) - I am sure that voice command would help with this.

I think that you need to drive the car for a while for it to grow on you and until you know your way around it then it can be very frustrating and annoying to try to understand it while driving. Once you've got it though it is a doddle.

A funny thing that sticks in my mind though is when I went for a test drive in the E60 the dealer was very honest and told me that the iDrive was a real killer during demos. He said that once a potential customer started fiddling with it then they would go away with a very negative impression. His term was "like a PC user trying to learn to use a MAC - while driving! "

His approach was simple - during the testdrive, dont touch the iDrive - just enjoy the drive.

Completly agree about the A6 - it looks ike a complete dogs dinner, very cluttered and confusing. If you're going to have lots of buttons then they should be in your eyeline.

wiszmaster

the A6's system is very nice actually - before slamming it you should try it.

its QUICK, simple to use, very straight forward.
here is a better view of the controls



just my $0.02 ... not that they count

urbo73

After getting used to iDrive, all of the sudden all these buttons seem more confusing!

Iceman

Exactly my thoughts!

stream

Agreed. Plus, if you're going to still have all those buttons, keep them on the dash, where they're easier to quickly look down at to view when driving.

Mercedes is also coming out with their version of iDrive on the new S class. I think we'll look back a few years from now and wonder what all the fuss was about this new UI (user interface). BMW was on the (b)leading edge, and like all early adopters, there is always some teething pain. I'm just glad the 7 series got to go through the worst of it!

zippers525

Even with auto air there is a little temp control in the i-drive, even if you are in auto. It under hte vent settings. Its the one that goes from four bars of blue to 1 white to 4 red. It changes the temp and makes it hotter or colder. For instance, if your on manual mode with the dial all the way to hot but your bars are set to blue it wont be as hot as if the bars were all red.

wiszmaster

how do you have your settings set? to me it seems like having the AC set to 72-74 during the day, and i crank it up to ~76 at night because it gets too cold. weird controls.

Stranger

That's because that controls the air temp from the centre vents. With it set to red, you will get more hot air blowing at you directly.

Stranger

We have different climate here but I set the centre vent to 2 red bars. Then I set the a/c to whatever temp I feel comfortable. It works fine for me cause at night I won't feel too cold either. I very rarely touch the temp or the centre vent control except when I have to turn up the heat to get rid of the smell from the a/c.