worthless gps

Make sure you have the correct Region set when looking for an address,

 

Rtfm

 

^no need to be brutal. The OEM gps does suck, even when they are newer versions.

I searched for the US Post Office in an unfamilar part of town and it directed me 2 miles to an old apartment complex. No post office in sight. It's always a POS when I need it to be helpful.

 

First, make sure you have the proper region selected. Once that is set, make sure to enter addresses in a reverse order: from general to specific. Never give the GPS more information than necessary, as you may accidentally filter out your desired destination. For example, say you are looking for an address on South Lovers Lane. In the database it may be listed as South Lovers Lane, South Lovers Ln, S. Lovers Lane, or S. Lovers Ln. Enter it as "Lovers" without any of the supplemental information; that way you can pick the correct version from a list.

Let's look at an example. Suppose we want to find the following address:

116 S. Lovers Lane
Kalamazoo, Michigan

We start by going to the second address screen and entering a few letters in the state field to select Michigan. This will now limit the list of cities to only those found in Michigan, so the list will not be cluttered by cities in other states.

Now we go to the city field. We can enter letters until Kalamazoo pops up, or enter just the first few letters and then select Kalamazoo from the list. Either way works.

Once the city is selected the list of streets is limited to only those found in Kalamazoo. This makes it much easier to find the correct street. Enter the street as "Lovers" - don't use the "South" or "Lane", as the database may use another form. "Lovers" can entered in its entirety, or once again we can use just the first few letters. Pop up the list and look for S. Lovers Lane. It may be abbreviated differently. It may even appear more than once, using differing abbreviations. Pick the one you want. You may have to try more than one.

Finally, move to the street address field. This field will now be limited to only street numbers found on S. Lovers Lane. Key in 116.

The process is easier than it sounds, and it makes a big difference when entering destinations. There are areas of the country where the database is poor, in which case no amount of technique helps.

Tom

 

The NAV system in the Prius is the same as in the Lexus...

 

My Nav system gives me no issues. Once I took the time to configure it to match my driving style, it takes me where I want to go without fail.

I do not think there is very much difference between your Nav and mine.

 

I agree with JD here. The only time I had a problem was when it couldn't find Cedar Point Amusement Park the first time I took it there. I cursed and yelled at it....then realized I had to select the appropriate region. There have been a few times where the "dot" for the destination wasn't QUITE accurate, but it got me close enough to where my vision and alertness found the building.

 

the vast majority of the time, I have no problem finding the streets and I get the right location -- and mine is a 2004

why don't you throw out some addresses you aren't finding and see if we can find them on ours?

 

Ditto. That holds true for me in CA and WA. I've also used mine w/o much issue in NV and OR but the Vancouver BC area wasn't good. Mine's the original disc that came w/my 06.

To the OP, how about try finding these streets in San Jose, CA?
Royalwood Way
Camden Ave
Almaden Expressway

 

Have you tried cleaning the DVD? It's free so it's worth a shot.

 

results w/my 06 w/original DVD

On my 06's original DVD:
710 Carolina Court, Modesto, CA - house number does not exist. It can find the street. It has the address range as 7100-7199. Interestingly, Google Maps doesn't seem to be able to find that house number and ditto for NAVTEQ Maps and Traffic (sole provider of map data on my 06 DVD).

5314 Paso Del Rio Way, Concord, CA - found it w/o issue

Out of curiosity, does your map DVD include copyrights for Navteq and Teleatlas or just Navteq?

 

Since you were able to find the streets I mentioned in San Jose, CA, it sounds like your region/search area is set right.

Side note: I do recall a couple times (less than 5, I think) where my car's nav system was unable to provide turn by turn guidance for certain areas. Once was somewhere San Jose and Las Vegas, likely after having gotten off I-5. Another time was in my friend's area in El Dorado Hills, which isn't that far from you. I've only visited him once.

I just checked the copyrights on my disc. Mine has data ver 05.1 and says U40 in the upper right and has these copyrights:
2005 DENSO CORPORATION
2004 NAVTEQ
GDT, Geographic Data Technology, Inc.
Data by infoUSA (c) 2004

Earlier in the year, I was surprised to hear of Tele Atlas being at all on Toyota's nav DVDs (see http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...tion-10-1-gen-6-update-dvd-2.html#post1244710 and one post further down.)

There are only two major map data vendors: Navteq and Tele Atlas. Navteq is generally known to have better map quality in the US. I'd always heard that Navteq was used by most automotive OEMs. It's unclear what portions of Toyota's map data comes from each vendor and whether there's any merging.

Denso is a MAJOR supplier to Toyota but also supplies many components (including nav systems) to other automakers, including GM (!).

Confirmed that my iPhone 4 finds 5314 Paso Del Rio Way, Concord, CA w/o issue.

I don't know what else to say (after trying to clean the disc) other than filing a complaint via phone at http://www.toyota.com/help/contactus.html. The links to posts by Prius Team at http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...6-nav-system-worth-1800-a-11.html#post1316654 sort of elaborate as to why.

Can someone with nav DVD 10.1 or 11.1 chime in on the OP's two addresses from post 12? (http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...7956-nav-update-dvd-11-1-way.html#post1396953 has 11.1 already.)

 

I'll try to remember to look into it on my nav when I get done work at 7pm EST. Hopefully I'll remember to take the post-it note that I wrote them on with me when I leave

I wish that the automakers would partner with Google somehow, to get their map data into the cars with street view. I'm sure this is A LOT of data, but it would be really helpful as I feel they have the best database of this information. Maybe one day I will have a use for a tablet afterall.

 

Cleaning it is just a free suggestion that someone else threw out. It might not help at all. As for contacting Toyota, don't get your hopes up too high. At least your complaint will be officially logged in their system.

The only reason for having people w/newer rev discs to check those addresses is to see if the map data on those is any better. If so, you could go that route but unfortunately Toyota charges so much for updates (thru legit sources), you could buy a dedicated PND for less than 1/2 that.

Their map data appears to be a conglomeration of Tele Atlas data + others. See the lower right corner of Google Maps and Legal Notices for Google Maps/Google Earth and Google Maps/Google Earth APIs. In the past, I thought they used some Navteq data, but it seems no more.