Wondering if anyone has any advice concerning the search capability of the Mini Cooper Nav system. To be more specific, I was driving my wife's Cooper this weekend and I needed to find the nearest "Office Depot". Let me preface with the fact that I have a portable Garmin Street Pilot that I normally use in my truck. Very simple to use, to find anything I use the "Spell" option....type in the name of what I'm looking for.....few secs later, the nearest one's shows up. With the Cooper Nav you seemed forced to enter in a category before it will search for your target destination. Office Depot (and many others) seem not to be in a category. I tried both the "Travel Information" and "General Destinations" options with no luck. I used "Shopping", "Business", "Electronics", and "Other Merchandise"....none worked. Is there a way around this where you can just input the name of what your looking for without putting it in a category? Does anyone know if the newest DVD from NavTeq that was just released fix this problem? By the way I have updated the Nav System to 27.1, and I love the perspective view. Overall I like the graphics and accuracy of the Cooper Nav System, just wish it was as simple as my Garmin to search for something if you don't know the address. Thanks for any advice.

MS

 

Only a sympathetic voice here. The POI feature could definitely use some help.:impatient.
Unlike the Garmin, I haven't found a 'generic' name search in the MINI Nav.

 

There is all sorts of things that I wish we could do to make it eaiser to search. For instance I'd love to be able to search by phone #. All places list the phone # on the DVD, so whey can't we search directly by # (the honda one you can).

When v27 came out and we could enter a zipcode that made it a bit easier.


But I've come to the conclusion if its a retail store, I won't be able to look it up. I can easily find a gas station, or place to eat, but thats about it.

 

I went into "General Destinations" then "Travel Information" then "Info on Location" then tried "Shopping" and "Business" and typing in Office Depot and nothing. They really do need just a single area where you can type in the name without having to find the category. Has anyone got the 2007 disk, did not improve anything

 

Is it possible that Office Depot is simply not included in the map database at all? That would explain why it isn't coming up, although it wouldn't say much for the completeness of the Navteq disc.

 

Just tried on my car. Couldn't get Office Depot, OfficeMax, or Staples while searching in multiple categories.

 

Thanks for all the comments.....I just sent a "complaint" email to NavTeq....asked if they plan to fix this problem in future upgrades. I post if they answer......look foward to any other comments.

 

I think it will turn out to be a BMW rather than a Navteq problem. All of the information is probably already on the Navteq disk. BMW provides the software in the Nav computer, and they have not implemented this type of search to retrieve and display locations.

 

Just an update....Navteq did respond back to my question. Here is their repsonse.


Marc,

Thank you for contacting NAVTEQ.

We do not write the software that runs on all the navigation systems. The Mini system is written by VDO and it is the software that determines what is accessed and how it is accessed. We provide the data base and it is the same for all customers. Garmin could be adding in another data base from someone else for their software. For any information about your Mini VDO system, you will need to contact VDO.

For additional questions, you may call us direct.

NAVTEQ
Customer Contact Center
888.628.6277

Looked up VDO and here is their website for reference. So are they the one's writing the software updates??

http://www.vdodayton-shop.com/start.aspx?action=Welcome

MS