I wasn't really keen on the Nav system - my motto is: 'If you don't know where you are going then don't go there' - but it came in useful when I took an overnight guest to a relative's home. The kid couldn't remember anything about the address except for a name of a nearby street (!!) so I used the joystick to search the area till he found the street and then saw the name of the street where he needed to go. Saved a bunch of driving around.

Am going to beam my address into it tonight from my Treo phone - will let you know what happens!

 

As a fellow Palm user, good luck. I don't think this'll work but I hope it does. We await your report.

 

It would be great if it were palm compatible. This would raise the NAV to a 9 out of 10 for sure. Thanks to Wannabe, we found out that the NAV does somewhat have a bird's eye. It is pretty basic and not as impressively layed out as our Nissan compet. but makes it a heck of a lot closer. I am happier I am getting this option now.


Hey 8-Wannabe: Keep the screen shots coming with more options and views etc. WE ARE VERY INTERESTED.

 

Glad you like it. I will take requests on the screen shots. Tell me specifically what you want to see and I'll go for it.

 

8_Wannabe:
Do they have gas stations, supermarkets, malls on POI.

Can you find wehunt ct
30058
lithonia
on the DVD info?

How about some more Bird's eye pics.

 

In Acura's NAV.

Say, you are in the middle of the your trip and you get stuck in traffic on the HW. All what you have to do is hit the Menu, select "Route" option and the NAV will re-route the trip from the point you are till your destination AVOIDING the current (jammed)leg/street.

In this case, it will take you off the HW on the next next exit and avoiding the jammed HW. Very useful feature,

Nashua.

 

Yes, yes and yes. As well as border crossings, ferry landings, ATMs, hospitals, parking garages, ski resorts and court houses. Everything but post offices for some odd reason. I bet they add that in a future release.

Sorry, in Lithonia all I could find was Wehunt Way, the 6600 block. How new is the court? Check out navtech.com; maybe you can call them to see how long it takes them to add new streets. If you do call them, see what the latest software version is for the Panasonic. I got DVD 3.18.20.2, s/w version 49.95 2003.1. If this ain't the latest and greatest I'll have a word or two with MazdaUSA.

As for bird's eye view, that screen shot is as good as it gets. Ain't much, I know. Some nav systems, birds eye is their normal view so it is very elaborate. Not so here.

 

There's several things you can do. First, if you know of a jam before you embark, you can tell the navi to avoid that street. Second, if you're in the midst of a jam, just pull off at the next exit and it will automatically reroute you. Third, there is a recalculate menu function that will give you 2 or 3 alternate routes to choose from while you sit there. Then, there is a Detour function which I'm not sure what it does. I think the recalc function is like what the Acura does. I really don't think this will be an issue.

 

Did you guys figure out that there are more than 2 route choices. There are 5 actually. You get the shortest route and the avoid highway one. I was upset since these 2 are almost always the same in Atlanta. Then I found the detour option -- 3 more routes are calculated in three different colors for your viewing and choice. Easy to read, see, and choose. Now I get the funky routes that make no sense in time or space on a map, but are perfect considering Atlanta's traffic and highway pattern. Try it, it is the best feature of the DVD so far.

 

8_wannabe, the G35 has predictive text much like text messaging on a cell phone in which it recognizes the letters you input and automatically grays out the letters that couldn't possibly come next after that letter...it doesn't appear from this picture that the 8's navi has this feature unless it's a feature you can turn on...do you know?

 

The RX-8 has a predictive mode when entering names of streets, cities, or points of interest. It will not show letters that are impossible according to its database of place names. However, when doing this you are not in a keyboard mode; you are entering letters one by one at the top of the screen. See my screen shot bottom of page 3. At the top, I entered "Q". If I tap my cursor to the right, I would then enter "U". Choices of letters in the second spot (in the "U" place) would be a very short list; I wouldn't scroll through the entire alphabet. Maybe just U and space (for Q_Street). So, yet entry of names gets easier the more letters you've entered. After you've entered a couple letters, instead of bumping the cursor to the right, just click it and it will take you to a list of place names you can scroll through and select the right one. So you have to do very little typing once you get used to it.

Where I am entering "Liquor Store" there is no predictive mode. That's because I'm naming my Marked Point and I can call it anything I want. I could call it "QWERTY" if I felt like it, so predictive mode wouldn't be appropriate in that instance.