I really like the idea of having nav in the car, and I know for some people the nav option obliterates the giant speedo which they dislike. But I can't help it - it does not look like a speedometer anymore with the nav and I'm disappointed that I don't like it more...

 

There's a speedometer in the center???

That speed, with or without Nav in the center is just retarded if you ask me. Dear MINI, Kill the speedo altogether, leave the speed on the digital guage, and make the Nav screen an inch or two bigger.

Thanks!

 

Lol...Kill the Nav Give me oil, water, amp and turbo boost gauges....didn't we beat this dead horse alredy...:impatient Here we go around the Mulberry Bush..

 

I agree, the NAV in the middle o' the speedo looks makeshift and afterthought-ish...so I bought a Tom Tom and love it!!!

John

 

I think its better than the R50/53 though - no center speedo at all.

 

No, kill the speedo and add some more black plastic. That's what every car needs more of. That and a windshield that ends 10 feet from your face (lol).

 

There was a story on the C-Net Car Tech podcast a few weeks ago that talked about a survey that says, used car buyers see factory nav systems as negative value. Most used car buyers think that the factory systems are out of date in a used car and too expensive to update. With free standing nav systems selling for as cheap as $200 the factory navs seem like potential trouble for no added value.

 

Sigh.....Just give me oil pressure, Amp and turbo boost gauges instead...those I would find useful...

 

I like the nav in the speedo better than the radio. It's pretty much a consensus that the entire centerstack, speedo included, was designed by cavemen. If I were buying before '09, where hopefully they totally redesign the centerstack, NAV would be a must.
The R53 center speedo w/o nav or column speedo with nav was just right.

 

THAT is the biggest load of BS I have ever herd. STOP IT!! If you had the same exact car, with same milage on it, and same shape, and all same features except one had Nav, and the other didn't. Which would you buy?

That's what I thought. shhheeeesh!!

 

Well...I would buy the one with NAV. However, I wouldn't pay an extra dime for it...but then that's just MHO

 

at the same price?

I wouldnt pay more for factory nav, and have not yet

it's damn near 10 % the cost of the car, gimme a break

 

I could see this being true - I would not pay more for nav in a used car. The product cycle for freestanding nav units is like 1 year. Something that is going to be in a car for 10+ years is going to be woefully out of date. Why pay extra for something that is outperformed by a unit the size of a cell phone that costs 300$ and you can replace in a year with something better...

Mini has to offer it, but it seems like a poor value, and I don't think it looks great. Better in the 07, but center speedo to me is such a fun part of the dash I hate to give any of it up.

Just an opinion. Nav buyers should not give a hoot what I think - they are having too much fun with their systems to care!

 

For those dissing OEM GPS, your way off base about being obsolete. Since the only reason GPS exists is to get you from A to B, and all maps (mostly) come from Navteq, my 3 year old GPS works just fine and always will.

If your talking portable production life cycles, your not really talking GPS but more add-on widgets like BT, mp3 players, .jpg viewers, etc. Just more crap they add on to get you to buy. But, GPS is GPS period.

For more high end cars, OEM GPS is about mandatory. Who wants to buy an expensive car and have to worry about plugging in some lame add-on unit???

For low-end cars like the MINI, cars selling for less than the average car in the US, then the argument about dropping 10% of the value of the car is very valid. Unless you got $$ to drop, its much more economical to go aftermarket and you get more for your money

But any argument about obsolence is way off base.

 

Yes, and the usuable GPS information from the satellites is limited to time, latitude, longitude, and elevation. Would you really want a GPS that only gave you those four pieces of information? Look at some of the handheld and OEM GPS systems from a few years ago and ask yourself if you'd be happy with them today. Even features like a speed readout, the ability to enter in a destination by address, or the ability to save waypoints with useful English names weren't around from the very beginning. As time and technology have progressed, the receivers have gotten better, the displays have gotten better, the user interface has gotten better, and some of the older units can't even be updated with the most modern maps.

They'll still get you from point A to point B, as long as you don't mind the fact that they're ignorant of the new freeway that would have gotten you there in half the time, or that the Chinese restaurant you were looking for at point B has been closed for two years.

And this is completely independent of all the bluetooth/MP3/ipod integration - I'm just talking about the core GPS capabilities. In 2000, when the only navigation systems the Navy saw fit to put in my plane were a magnetic compass and a purely-inertial navigation system, we used to fly around with a Garmin handheld propped up in the dashboard that gave us little more than lat/long. Now the planes all have modern GPS receivers with more capabilities and displays, and they're a lot better for it, even though the GPS satellite system is the same as it was back then.

 

Look at some of the handheld and OEM GPS systems from a few years ago and ask yourself if you'd be happy with them today.

I cannot speak to the year 2000, but I can speak to 2004 and Im perfectly happy with it. I believe thats when I bought a Magellan 700, 10 GB disk. It does not have Sirf receiver but that is not an issue. Everything else you mentioned is all updated in software. The last sw update, that came on a DVD, updated all maps from Navteq, all POIs, added voice names for streets, new rerouting info, etc. If I want to add traffic, its just an added piece of hw. The SW build was in the last DVD.

Its all in the SW.

Your going to see the same thing in the iPhone. Hardware is dirt cheap. Software is what is expensive.

So yes, I'm perfectly happy with the GPS I bought three years ago.

 

Yes, perhaps obsolete is a poor choice of words. But features are added that are appealing, and not just useless things like MP3 players that don't make any sense in the context of use within the car. For example my brother purchased a 200$ nav unit that offers 3 views, map view oriented to your car, map view oriented north, and a fly behind mode with context sensitive perspective view (meaning it automatically zooms out at way points where you have to turn to give you a better view of the intersection). These are things that are functional improvements, and something that I understand the built in nav does not do. Sure a nav is a nav and it will always get you there. But they are getting better very quickly if you ask me.

 

I have no argument that the functions of the GPS are getting better. Essentially the User Interface (e.g., different views) are getting better. But as I described above, on my Magallen, they did the same thing on the last SW update ... added different views rather than the same one from 3 years ago.

This is all in the SW.

Now for the OEM GPS, I'm sure its the same thing. I'm not sure if MINI/BMW updates add functionality, I can't speak to that. But for the car maker I do know, they do (just not cheap).

Again, for a MINI, I'd dead set against GPS. Paying 10% of the value of the car for this option, IMO, is a bit silly. For a more expensive car, without it you will get LESS money at resale. It's just expected.

Here is an article about what the car makers are doing to force you to buy GPS. This is perhaps the most interesting part:

It’s only a matter of time before factory-fitted satellite navigation will eventually go the way of the FM radio and CD player; it’ll be a low-cost standard feature. Manufacturers are already searching for The Next Big Thing: a new “must have” luxury that commands the same premium. Meanwhile, unless you’re a neat freak who doesn’t like anything stuck to the windshield, leave that sat nav option box unchecked and buy a portable unit.

Its just a matter of time

 

Well, with a hard disk-based GPS unit from only three years ago, you're really talking about an entirely different breed of cat. As I said earlier, the units with enough internal memory to hold all the maps you'll likely need will age better than the units that won't.

But handheld and OEM automotive GPS systems have been around for longer than three years, and the earlier ones aren't nearly as nice. How about buying a car with a CD-based Nav system that has different discs for each region of the US that you have to buy separately and load as you move from one region to the next if you want to drive across the country? There are plenty of them out there, and the automakers aren't updating the maps for all of them.

And while a lot *can* be updated via software/firmware, there's also a lot that can't. You'll never get a brighter screen, higher resolution, new receiver technology, a faster microprocessor for faster response to user inputs, or touchscreen where it didn't exist before, simply by updating the software.

I agree that a unit purchased today will have a longer service life before its deficiencies compared to newer units become too much to deal with. That's because the development curve on consumer GPS units has begun to flatten out, and they're starting to concentrate on "gadgets", like the Bluetooth, MP3, etcetera.

But there are still going to be enhancements to the core functionality of GPS units - navigation - that perhaps we haven't thought about yet. And some of those features are going to be pretty compelling. After all, we consider the display of a vehicle icon against a moving-map background to be pretty much a minimum capability for a GPS unit these days, but it wasn't that long ago that consumer GPS units couldn't do that.

 

I would agree. I first bought a handheld POS that held maybe two states. Once they put 10 and now up to 30GB drives in there. Game over.

I wouldn't. Again, there is no way I would buy MINIs GPS for $2K, either CD or DVD based. The mere fact I can move the Magallen from car to car was the primary reason. Whats the point of buying a GPS for every car?

Agreed, then again it came with touchscreen As to the rest, to be honest, I dont even look at the screen. The system just talks to me and thats it. It announces the streets and tells me when to turn. No need to turn my head for anything. I wouldn't care about a moving icon nor different views. I guess I'm just happy Sometimes simple is better.

I have to admit, I did get OEM Nav in the croc (it came with it) and I never look at the map. It sits in the center of the console and I'm not looking at no console. The system just talks. To give it credit, it does display, besides the moving map, the directions right below the big Tach so you can't miss it if you look down (as well as the moving icon on the map) but still, I dont look down at anything but to glance at the tach. As to processor speeds, I dont see how being any faster is going to help anything other than initial sat locking. Its not like I can drive faster than the map moves

 

OEM nav is JUNK. i have never seen an OEM nav SO SLOW, and so Cluttered.

Just look at these pics. You tell me if you can tell what street is what street.

Biggest waste of $2000

 

If the user-interface responsiveness doesn't bother you now, it probably never will, but I've had GPS units where the response in switching from screen to screen, entering an address, or even just waiting for the unit to boot up was hard to take. (Imagine running Mac OS X on an old slow G3 processor - everything works, but you can feel yourself aging while programs load, windows re-size, etcetera). There's just a certain level of "snappiness" I expect from a user interface.

And my biggest complaint with the 276c was inputting addresses or waypoint names. You had to use the rocker switch to go from letter to letter, then press the rocker switch to the right to get to next character, and then start all over again. The touchscreen on the Nuvi is *much* nicer, even if they haven't implemented a QWERTY keyboard instead of the current ABCDEF keyboard. Dammit, some of us know how to type, and are slowed down incredibly when the letters aren't where they're supposed to be!

 

Wow, I see what you mean. The only thing I can tell from that screen is that you're (probably) on Chandler, about to turn left onto Burbank? in 800 feet. None of the five icons at the top-right are intuitive, unless the second one is a volume indication. And why does the "Range" indication at the bottom of the screen have a caution indicator next to it??

 

How many updates were there for the R53 NAV? Several if I recall correctly... yes at a cost, but EVERY GPS Mfgr charges for updates, Garmin, TomTom, Magellan, Alpine, Clarion, etc... average price about $150.00.

The fact is there are pros/cons to every NAV system, OEM Integrated, aftermarket portable, cell phone based, etc...

There is no "perfect" solution for everyone, we will all have our own preferences and opinions. What works for my wife is a TomTom 910, me I ordered my R56 with NAV. It's just way too subjective to be a "right/wrong" issue... that's why it's called an "Option"

 

But how many people are still going to be driving their R53 long after MINI has stopped releasing updates? I think some owners with the CD-based systems are already running into "lack-of-support" issues.

If you don't plan on having the car for very long, or are content with old maps, then that's fine. But at least with a handheld, you can throw the old one up on eBay and put the money towards a new one. With the OEM nav, your system's capabilities are eventually going to become a quaint "snapshot in time" of what OEM Nav systems were able to do "back in the day".

Does anyone remember the "Etak Navigator" that was available in some GM cars in the 80's? Tape-loaded operating system software and maps, and no GPS - it was dead-reckoning only. If you still had one of those cars today, the OEM navigation system wouldn't be much better than a hole in the dashboard, and after-purchase support has long since disappeared.