Re: Disappointed With Garmin City Navigator NA v7.0 Update

JamesM wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, am I the only person that is disappointed with
> the new 7.0 update of Garmin's City Navigator North America? I
> started out with v5 and then updated to v6 at a cost of $150. I was
> very please with version 6 and most of the time it did pretty good
> route calculations. Version 6 said it had over 5 million points of
> interest. Of course there is always a lot of problem with POIs due to
> store openings and closings, but it did come in very handy when
> traveling.
>
> Well, I paid another $150 for Version 7 update since Garmin was
> advertising it as having almost 6 million points of interest. Now
> that I've updated to Version 7, I can't imagine it having more POI
> since the map data is smaller then the older version. For my area, a
> lot of Post Offices and other POIs have been removed. Since I do a
> lot of camping, I've also noticed a lot of the campgrounds in version
> 6 have also been removed from version 7. So from my viewpoint, I was
> expecting more POIs, but it sure looks like there are fewer. I guess
> some of the categories could have gotten extra POI and they removed
> some from other categories, but I don't like being led to believe that
> it increased from over 5 million to almost 6 million when that doesn't
> appear to be the case
>
> Now to really irritate me, I've tried doing some simple routes around
> town - nothing more then 25 miles. Version 6 did a pretty good job of
> routing. Version 7 is taking me the long way around on some of the
> expressways to get to the same destination. When it recalculates,
> instead of realizing there is a shorter and faster route, it keeps
> trying to route me off the expressway and head back to the incorrect
> route that it calculated. I've tried using version 6 again and it
> does the correct route calculation.
>
> At this point since there doesn't appear to be more POIs (at least not
> the ones I use) that Garmin advertised and the very poor route
> calculations, I sure wished I didn't spend the $150 to upgrade to the
> new version. I sure don't have a lot of confidence in the new version
> as being able to calculate a good route. I don't know if Garmin has a
> return policy, but I'm going to be contacting them for a refund since
> the version 7 update is not what I expected, doesn't calculate good
> routes for my area nor does it appear to have what they are
> advertising with the number of points of interest.
>
> Anyway, I'm curious if anybody really likes the new update and thinks
> it's an improvement over version 6 or are there other people that
> think they wasted their money.
>
> James

The European V.7.0 is not particularly up-to-date.

New roads completed in 2004 do not appear, and many POI's that are included
have long since been demolished or changed in status. Of course one has to
be realistic about the cartography, and it would be ridiculous to expect all
features to be absolutely bang up-to-date.

By far the best way to have up-to-date maps is to buy a new road map. I
bought the 2006 version of our AA Road Atlas yesterday. It has all this
year's amendments and new roads incorporated, and it cost me £1.85!

We should be careful about not being carried away with the new technology,
it is not necessarilly better than old technology, just different! (Oh, and
infinitely more expensive!).

Do digital maps cost 120 times as much to update as old-fashioned paper
maps? I don't see why they should. Perhaps someone better-qualified than me
can explain? The benefits of market size, maybe?

Dennis.




.

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