Interesting article from the Economist on next gen's SatNav:
http://www.economist.com/research/articles...90&fsrc=nwl

Heh - I gave mine a Jamaican rasta voice so that it wouldn't be so annoying. He drags out the directions and never comes across as "nagging". Some of the exclamations are pretty funny too.

It's also kinda cathartic when you need to curse at the GPS, you can blame your mistakes on the "ganja smoking rastafarian".

A friend has a Suzuki trucklet with a sat nav that is removable but mounts on to a dedicated spot on top of the dash. I'm pretty sure it derives power from this connection to the vehicle, but don't know whether or not there is any other integration with vehicle operation.

My wife and I are currently using a Garmin 275T on a trip. It got us to JFK w/o incident and are now traveling through Italy with it. It has free FM traffic information, which is fine in the few areas that have it, and it gives "safety camera" info on the Autostrada. The problem is, whenever I slow down for a safety camera warning, every one else wants to tear around me. At home, I've tried out the Garmin in my bimmer to compare it with the built-in sat nav with 2004 DVD. The Garmin is much faster and has more features and flexibility, but it spazzes out sometimes just like the bimmer nav, probably because it has similar errors in its software from Navtech.

Interesting goodman thanks for the info

It was a good point that the article touched on regarding the gross overpricing of the built-in systems. I understand that a BMW built-in system is more expensive to make than a TomTom, but still I don't see it being reasonable at $2,100 vs the TomTom at about $300. Especially, since TomTom is actually the better system in many respects.

Another point I have had some experience with is traffic reporting. In and around New York City the traffic reporting that I've had experience with is a lot more reliable on weekdays and nearly useless on weekends. I should point out that I don't have the traffic reporting on my BMW Nav though, I'm going by what my iPhone is like and other people's BMW Navigation systems with Traffic. But so far, I'm sorry to say that this has been reliable much rarer than I relied on it - which is already way too unreliable IMHO.

Finally, I read recently on autoblog.com that Lexus (I think) is coming out with a voice activation system to go with it's new Nav system, that will recognize "casual language" (no Rasta voice though AFAIK - wish I had that in my car, would be nice - like a nice soft female rasta voice :rolleyes: eeh, a boy can dream... ) How casual a language will this system recognize - I have no clue, but its nice to see that the voice recognition s/w is finally becoming more and more usable.