Hawkwing

I'm afraid you'll have to calm your expectations! 7 Chr post codes are not possible with BMW Sat Nav systems - BMWUK informed me last year (May 2006) there is insufficient data storage space on the DVD to enable such a feature - also there were no plans to add such a feature in the future. Maybe that's changed recently..............................

Russ1974

What's annoying is that they supply a "European" DVD. I don't drive to Europe! I probably never will! If I did, I could pop in a DVD for whichever country I was going to drive to.

If BMW invested some money to write a UK-Specific DVD with full postcodes, and offered them as a ?200 option / accessory, they'd make a fortune.

Hawkwing

I suggested similar to what your'e proposing here in conversation with BMWUK last year when I contacted them re the lack of full UK post code features - the impression (excuse/reason) that was offered by the UK product manager was there was insufficient demand for such a feature vis-a-vis likely costs. Ummmm...........

Russ1974

Yeah, no point dwelling - I've assumed it will never happen on the E60. Less than 3 years and the F10 comes out, they are going to be concentrating on that. Now, for the F10, I'd like to see a 64Gb Solid State hard-drive built in to the car. World wide GPS maps, full postcode in the UK, 20Gb on the HD reserved for transmitting your MP3s via WiFi (using the built in WiFi in the F10 of course) when the car is parked on your drive and connected to your home network... etc. It's such basic technology these days! If their technical staff spent time working on gadgets/features that people _REALLY_ wanted (instead of gimmicks like lane departure / night vision / headlight auto dim), they really would have "the ultimate driving machine", instead of what they have now which is "a really good car" !!

fastboyuk

Hope you realise this is complete and utter tosh that BMW is spinning. A DVD is easily big enough to handle the entire continent plus UK postcodes. I've debated this on "the other BMW forum" already. What really annoys me is the fact that BMW are spinning yarns about how they didn't have enough space. I know for a fact (through work) that the postcode file for the whole of the UK would easily fit in a text file less than 1MB in space. Even linking this with addresses wouldn't require much programming. Even if they were running short of space (which cannot be the case), they could easily find 1MB or 2MB from somewhere.

My Discovery has full postcode entry, as did my Mondeo ST before it: and that's for the whole of Western Europe and Scandinavia.

If Ford can do it...

Hawkwing

From BMW's perspective they can of course tag the 'safety' feature slogan alongside the technology you mention to sell their cars - whether it is actually a safety feature is another argument entirely! - It will be interesting to see what they (and other mfrs.) do re in car systems in years to come - as you point too current technology in this area is well in advance of what has been applied in-car to date.

Right this minute though I'd settle for the current technology functioning as it should, or is that too much to expect...................