redhat_man

Thankfully, they did away with the eight way menu on the pre-facelift and standardised all idrive on the four way menu. i think with time, bmw will do something nice with the idrive. at least let's give it to them for the bold step...

Mercy

I use both XP and SLED 10 but I fail to see how one is faster than the other. I do see the benefits of using open source.

cjbryce

On equally sized hardware:-

1 The kernel for *nix is much much smaller than Windoze so Windoze will usually run slower
2 Windoze relies on loading/unloading bits of the OS when running, whereas *nix loads all the OS
3 Windoze is bloatware and genrally loads tons of stuff you don't normally need

I run a Debian build server with MySQL, an email server, Apache and all the other bits you need for a decent commercial webserver. It is a dual 386 with 1Gb RAM. Windoze XP would only just boot on this

Having said that, ALL my desktopos and laptops are Windoze 'cause it's easier to use (even with a decent GUI *nix is still not as usable), far more common for interoperability with other users and much easier for non-tech-heads to install and maintain even than the best *nix distros.

Kamal(UK)

Ways to improve I Drive

Remove all climate control functionality (I have the higher level climate control which means I cannot manually adjust the flow of air between the various vents without going into the menu-CRAZY!)

Add a numerical keypad for telephone dialing (a la Mercedes)

Add a "back" button (as per Audi) meaning that you always go back to the last position you were at if you make a mistake.

INFACT-tell the BMW designers to spend a day in an Audi A8 and see how it should be done! This has 4 buttons for next to the control dial (nav, audio, car settings, telephone). so if you hit audio- you go straight there and then use the knob to do what you need to and you dont need to go back to the menu to get to the next change (ie I am in navigation and want to change a CD-SIMPLE- I just press Audio and I am there-I then press NAV and I am back to NAV) Its brilliantly intuative.

rlinger

it needs to be FASTER!

dlevi67

Well - you can do something even better with the BMW. Just move the controller and hold it in the direction of the top-level menu you want to access (back: radio/cd/tv, front: phone, left: climate, right: nav). 2 seconds holding and you are there. The only menu that requires two moves is settings (menu button + press controller), and that could be adjusted (e.g. if the climate controls went back to the dashboard).

Voila - Audi-like functionality and 4 fewer buttons - though having said that I haven't tried the Audi system.

One thing is for sure: there is so much functionality built into the thing that it's not hard to see why people forget some of it and have to spend time figuring it out again and again.

Bokke

I am in CO for the week on vacation, and we drove the X5 4.6is up from Dallas and I can honestly say that only thing I dont like about the X5 is not having iDrive. It just makes working everything some much easier, IMHO! I just hope they incorporate it into the new X5!

As much as I love the X5 on long trip, I really miss the iDrive.....plus how about 18.5mpg at an average speed of 79.6! You gotta love it....

just my 2 cents.....