Navigation System - Does it get any easier?

[fruzzetti]

I live in the San Francisco Bay area. I've successfully used the navigation system for myriad destinations on all corners of the bay. I've successfully used the navigation for my wedding trip to Seattle, for destinations in Las Vegas, for destinations in Reno and South Lake Tahoe, as well as southern California all with no incident and no issues. It's performed perfectly for me in all respects. The only irritation was learning when it expects whole words versus abbreviations ("St." versus "Saint," "E" versus "East," etc.). Once I figured out how to speak to it, it's never let me down.

~ dan ~

Also the near-direction turn-by-turn maps have been very high quality with accurate everything including lane placement.

[Joekc]

Originally Posted by GreenIsGood

I haven't played around a whole lot with the nav system yet, but what I've seen of it pales in comparison to the Garmin Nuvi 350 we use in another car. Not nearly as detailed maps, but worse, I programmed an address today (a store) just to see what route it would choose, and it was at least 7 miles out of the way!

I'm hoping to be able to tweak preferences but for now, my confidence is somewhat shaken.

I had the same experience coming home today. I knew the route exactly, but asked it to take me home just to see what would happen. It routed me off the main road (for no obvious reason) and into a really bad area of town. From there things just kept getting worse. I also have the Garmin Nuvi (360) and I've never seen this happen. I'm really trying with this thing, but on several occasions now it has sent me down streets which take me totally off an obvious route. I've lived in this town all my life, so I know the streets. I'm really worried about using it in an unknown city.

[ceric]

I just had my Prius' leather-trim interior installed in Hayward, CA (SF BayArea).
I went there in my Prius using the NAVI to guide me. The NAVI put the
destination on the wrong side of the street! When I went to pick up my Prius
the next day, I drove my '01 Odyssey (w/ NAVI also). The Odyssey's NAVI system
made no such mistake.

Overall, I found the NAVI system on Odyssey to be slower (being older, of course), but
more accurate than the one on Prius. I recently acquired a Navigon 5100 GPS. For $250, you get reall-time traffic (thru FM, no monthly fee), reality view of highway ramp, lane assist, plus Zagat review. Does NUVI 360 even come with Real-time Traffic?

[Joekc]

Originally Posted by ceric

I just had my Prius' leather-trim interior installed in Hayward, CA (SF BayArea).
. Does NUVI 360 even come with Real-time Traffic?

It's an option (you purchase an adapter) plus a monthly fee. It also requires a dangling cord to the power outlet, I've never bothered.

One reason Garmin may be extremely accurate where I live, is that Garmin's world headquarters are in suburban Kansas City. In the manual and demos, the streets are KC streets. Maybe Garmin uses us as guinea pigs.

[kathyb]

I just picked up my '08 Prius, spent the last hour in the car trying to program home into the nav .
I got as far as address and it took me no further. Did not go to a map or did it say OK at the bottom of the screen
I thought ok maybe it took the address....not! 6x and I still can't figure the thing out.
I'm very literate when it comes to setting stuff up self installing cable/the computer etc, etc. This confounds me. The manual has you going from what looks to be a simple setup to another page and then another page...I need real help...Please if anyone know what I'm doing wroing would love to know myself.
Totally frustrated but love the car I now have 26 miles on it

[toyoprius]

It'll take some time to get the hang of it, though you'll probably never gush about it being user-friendly. If you can't get it to take your home address, you've probably got it set up for the wrong region of the country.

Originally Posted by kathyb

I just picked up my '08 Prius, spent the last hour in the car trying to program home into the nav .
I got as far as address and it took me no further. Did not go to a map or did it say OK at the bottom of the screen
I thought ok maybe it took the address....not! 6x and I still can't figure the thing out.

[Spinnerbug]

I am new to Prius with my new one arriving days ago. I agree it is far from user friendly having come off using the Acura TL system which is very easy to use and certainly faster to use. I am really surprised how complicated the Toyota system is with all their expertise in high technology...I hope I get used to over time..Not sure I will get used to using the Bluetooth phone calling by name which is definitely many to many steps to make a call.

[fruzzetti]

It's too funny; I was so unimpressed with the nav in the Acura 2004 I drove. It was painfully slow, miserable at calculating alternate routes, laggy, over-simplified (gave me no easy control over its flexibility options, and thus no freedom) and seriously butt-ugly to use. It looked like a series of Windows 3.1 error messages all strung together in desperate attempt at cohesion.

When I installed the LockPick on my Prius it raised my satisfaction level with Prius' nav up to about 90%.

Weird how our personal tastes change how we see a product, eh?

~ dan ~

[a priori]

Originally Posted by toyoprius

If you can't get it to take your home address, you've probably got it set up for the wrong region of the country.

This could be the case. Mine continues to default to the Northwest. As lovely as Wash., Ore, Idaho may be, I live in Illinois, and even after programming "HOME" in IL, the default remains far, far away.

[GigaTigga]

I found the map views, and there is one that does a pretty close job to my roadmate. Also, compass view is rather nifty, too bad jill doesn't quite understand that "Compass mode" doesn't mean ATM poi's!