Sorry you feel that way. I agree that some of the responses were over the top. But when you are dealing with a community of real enthusiasts, which I believe separates this board from Bimmerfest, you will get some passion in the responses.

I too have posted on Bimmerfest under the same user name I have here. I gave up on Bimmerfest, however, because I felt it was way too commercialized and infested with BMW salespersons who seemed to post to drive up prices on our cars (there are one or two very helpful sales folks who post there -- like Ivan Romero of Bloomfield BMW -- but most I thought were twits. I also did not believe that, on Bimmerfest, the knowledge level ad passion for the E60 was nearly what it is here. Bimmerfest has its uses, such as getting information on car pricing and lease deals, but E60.net is my home for BMW stuff. I'd rather be in a basically non-commercial, ethusiast board where I personally like so many of the members than on a board that I perceive as too commercial and more generic. I would agree that not all our members are polite or not gentle with their opinions -- some are blunt and brutally honest and the "man up" contingent is alive and well here.

But that's the same anywhere you'd go and there is a way of dealing with those kind of folks. Indeed, some of the more brutally blunt members are the first ones to help others with mod ideas and possess a great wealth of knowledge.

Our admins and mods keep a close watch on this board and the true trolls do end up getting banned.

In any event, good luck with your new ride and with whatever radar detector you end up with.

 

BTW you can program your v1 so that it wont make so much noise picking up falses. When you get used to reading and understanding the radar detector its really great. The only real issue i read about the v1 is that it picks up too many falses and no GPS. If you program it, you can set it to pick up all bands or some bands, and it has automute so you can make it substantially less noisy. Also the arrows are great for seeing where its coming from, but since you said if you heard it beeping you would slow down until it was gone, then they may not be very beneficial to you in that regard. But i would say with the arrows you learn to see if the threat is real and if it has gone by, so your not stuck thinking someones on your tail when the threat may not be towards you or has passed you by now. ITs a bit hard to explain, you would have to use it to know what im talking about. good luck with your choice

 

Why so sensitive kzang .....this forum is definitly not for the faint of heart. If you can't handle a little ball bustin then maybe bummerfest is the place for you.

 

In his example, which is very good, say the cop is behind you and your beeping detector keeps beeping for 50 miles. Are you going to continue to drive the speed limit that long? At least if you know he's behind you, you can either try to spot him and his distance, or slow down long enough for him to pass (which in NY is usually at 100mph for no apparent reason), and then resume your speed.

Let me put it to you this way... if you need everything proven to you, and are not willing to take on faith the people's opinion that you came to ask, go ahead and spend an extra $100 and find out for yourself.

 

I guess inviting you to the NY/NJ meets is pointless then.

 

I've been going through this same dilema; arrows or GPS. The reality is that I wish I could have both. The arrows are awesome for obvious reasons. However, I think the GPS wiould be really handy on a regular commute with known false alarms. So here is my opinion. If most of your driving consists of commuting on the same route every day, the GPS feature of the 9500 is probably more useful. However, if you are frequently doing roadtrips through new areas, the GPS becomes useless and the arrows would have the edge. If only the Valentine1 had GPS....

 

I had really wanted to see that beautiful new 535. It looked great. Everyone I have ever met at our meets was totally nice and welcoming and very kind to my son Victor. I never saw a single instance of jerk-ike behavior.

 

I believe that the 9500 website has a place to download other GPS information...

That said, you would need a large group of people to populate the database to make it useful.

Just like the first guy to buy a fax machine. Who ya gonna send something to?

 

Don't group the rest of us along with what Praise the Lowered says, hes the only childish one in this thread. Regarding the original question you asked, I think it would help. I have a Beltronics which I got after a 100 in 65 speeding ticket on i10. Haven't gotten a ticket since, if I hear a KA band come on I slow down. I don't drive much over the limit anyways, if I hear the KA I only need to slow down like 5MPH. I don't race my car at all, if I had a more powerful car perhaps I would have a V1. They are expensive to me at least, so it depends what you are looking for. I think it would have been useful to me yesterday, I was driving out to a party yesterday out in the country and saw no speed limit signs. I wasn't sure what the speed was, and my Radar kept going off. I slowed down a bit, but the car behind me was right on my tail, so I must have been going too slow. Turns out the cop was behind that car, would have been nice to see a arrow where he was. Wasn't sure if he was hiding up ahead behind a tree or something.