RE: BMW Unveils New 1-series
Discussion
kambites said:
BMWBen said:
Why would you want to bother typing in coordinates when you could just click a button in google maps to send it straight to your car? What if you wanted to customise your route and get the sat-nav to send you along it? Good luck getting that kind of thing to work well on an in car system. Much better to do it on a device that's designed for content creation and send it over surely?
That's all very well, but (1) I've never wanted to do any of those things and (2) I very much doubt my computer could talk to my car anyway, because there's three solid walls in the way. My wireless network certainly doesn't make it into the garage. What protocol does it use, anyway? the idrive won't need to be connected to your wifi!!
E21_Ross said:
if you send an email for example, does it matter how far away the recipient PC is? the new BMWs can browse the web from basically anywhere so i suspect it just downloads it from a personal map site or something that you can save google map links in, and log in and download through idrive, at a simple guess.
Ah, it sends it via a mobile phone link? That would make sense. I forgot modern cars tended to have phones built in. There's no mobile phone reception in my garage either, but I accept that I'm in something of a minority there.
inkiboo said:
LuS1fer said:
I don't ever use a sat-nav or a mobile phone or an iPod so why should I pay for something for the benefit of the next buyer that I don't want?
If it is expensive then please, let's see an iDrive delete package and save the buyer some money.
I've just checked the BMW website and the new ES 1 series doesn't come with iDrive as standard. So if you really don't want it, buy that model.If it is expensive then please, let's see an iDrive delete package and save the buyer some money.
So if it can be done, why not across the range - might sell a few more?
kambites said:
BMWBen said:
Why would you want to bother typing in coordinates when you could just click a button in google maps to send it straight to your car? What if you wanted to customise your route and get the sat-nav to send you along it? Good luck getting that kind of thing to work well on an in car system. Much better to do it on a device that's designed for content creation and send it over surely?
That's all very well, but (1) I've never wanted to do any of those things and (2) I very much doubt my computer could talk to my car anyway, because there's three solid walls in the way. My wireless network certainly doesn't make it into the garage. What protocol does it use, anyway? Have you never taken your car to away somewhere for the weekend? Somewhere you haven't been before? Lets say... you've booked a romantic weekend at the woodlands hall hotel in Edern, North Wales. Would you prefer to a) find a bit of paper, write down the postcode on it, then carry the bit of paper to the car (assuming you remember, what with all the bags to load), and spend 2 minutes entering it into the satnav. And then spend half an hour looking for the hotel when you get there because the postcode only gets you within a mile.
or b) once you've booked the room and paid, click the "send address to my car" button. Then when you get in the car open the satnav menu, and boom, there it is at the top of the list. As well as the 3 or 4 other locations you sent over for the trip (a couple of restaurants, and a place you want to stop for a walk, perhaps).
You really can't see the advantage here?
ps. Don't go to the Woodlands Hall in Edern, you'll be disappointed.
Edit... and on point 2 - how many walls do you think are between the computer I'm typing this on and you right now?
Edited by BMWBen on Thursday 9th June 12:57
BMWBen said:
Cynical though you may be, you clearly have Have you never taken your car to away somewhere for the weekend? Somewhere you haven't been before? Lets say... you've booked a romantic weekend at the woodlands hall hotel in Edern, North Wales.
Would you prefer to a) find a bit of paper, write down the postcode on it, then carry the bit of paper to the car (assuming you remember, what with all the bags to load), and spend 2 minutes entering it into the satnav. And then spend half an hour looking for the hotel when you get there because the postcode only gets you within a mile.
or b) once you've booked the room and paid, click the "send address to my car" button. Then when you get in the car open the satnav menu, and boom, there it is at the top of the list. As well as the 3 or 4 other locations you sent over for the trip (a couple of restaurants, and a place you want to stop for a walk, perhaps).
You really can't see the advantage here?
I'd carry my 90 quid sat nav to my computer, put the GPS coordinates into it, then take it to the car when I went to the car. I can see the advantage in the system, but there's no way that it would save more than an hour of my time over the entire life of the car, so it's certainly not worth more than about 30 quid to me on the cost of the car. Have you never taken your car to away somewhere for the weekend? Somewhere you haven't been before? Lets say... you've booked a romantic weekend at the woodlands hall hotel in Edern, North Wales. Would you prefer to a) find a bit of paper, write down the postcode on it, then carry the bit of paper to the car (assuming you remember, what with all the bags to load), and spend 2 minutes entering it into the satnav. And then spend half an hour looking for the hotel when you get there because the postcode only gets you within a mile.
or b) once you've booked the room and paid, click the "send address to my car" button. Then when you get in the car open the satnav menu, and boom, there it is at the top of the list. As well as the 3 or 4 other locations you sent over for the trip (a couple of restaurants, and a place you want to stop for a walk, perhaps).
You really can't see the advantage here?
Alternatively I'd get a cheap android smart phone which can do GPS straight off Google Maps so I can set it up whilst stuck in a traffic jam on the bloody M6 around Birmingham.
I'm glad that such systems exist for those who want them. But you're never going to convince me that I do.
Edited by kambites on Thursday 9th June 13:03
kambites said:
Using a sat nav when driving is a damned slight safer than reading a map, though.
The sat-nav is a map so a small map propped on the dash would be the same, surely? Underlines the point. I can see the route in an atlas in advance and I write a list of roads and exits. It has never failed. A sat-nav has, on more than one occasion, sent me on a ridiculous route to nowhere, often via a stupid route. As an example, taking me off the motorway, down a dual carriageway for a mile or so, round a roundabout, back down the dual carriageway and back onto the motorway....Also, if I'm going out for the day, the last thing I want to do is switch on the computer and go through all that palaver.
LuS1fer said:
Next we'll have e-mails in cars then instant messaging then a lot of accidents. Sat navs are a distraction that drivers can't seem to help watching instead of the road. If you're using the stereo, you can't hear them telling you that you missed the exit.
That's an argument for integrating more things in the car The nav system in my car (when it worked... another story) fades down the music when it's giving instructions.kambites said:
LuS1fer said:
If it is expensive then please, let's see an iDrive delete package and save the buyer some money.
You could argue that about an awful lot of features of modern cars - the iDrive is hardly unique. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_segmentation
There's no reason that they couldn't stick iDrive in a mini, but the fact that you can't have it enforces the boundary between the BMW range, which is more upmarket, and the mini range, which is more cheap and cheerful.
kambites said:
BMWBen said:
Cynical though you may be, you clearly have Have you never taken your car to away somewhere for the weekend? Somewhere you haven't been before? Lets say... you've booked a romantic weekend at the woodlands hall hotel in Edern, North Wales.
Would you prefer to a) find a bit of paper, write down the postcode on it, then carry the bit of paper to the car (assuming you remember, what with all the bags to load), and spend 2 minutes entering it into the satnav. And then spend half an hour looking for the hotel when you get there because the postcode only gets you within a mile.
or b) once you've booked the room and paid, click the "send address to my car" button. Then when you get in the car open the satnav menu, and boom, there it is at the top of the list. As well as the 3 or 4 other locations you sent over for the trip (a couple of restaurants, and a place you want to stop for a walk, perhaps).
You really can't see the advantage here?
I'd carry my 90 quid sat nav to my computer, put the GPS coordinates into it, then take it to the car when I went to the car. I can see the advantage in the system, but there's no way that it would save more than an hour of my time over the entire life of the car, so it's certainly not worth more than about 30 quid to me on the cost of the car. Have you never taken your car to away somewhere for the weekend? Somewhere you haven't been before? Lets say... you've booked a romantic weekend at the woodlands hall hotel in Edern, North Wales. Would you prefer to a) find a bit of paper, write down the postcode on it, then carry the bit of paper to the car (assuming you remember, what with all the bags to load), and spend 2 minutes entering it into the satnav. And then spend half an hour looking for the hotel when you get there because the postcode only gets you within a mile.
or b) once you've booked the room and paid, click the "send address to my car" button. Then when you get in the car open the satnav menu, and boom, there it is at the top of the list. As well as the 3 or 4 other locations you sent over for the trip (a couple of restaurants, and a place you want to stop for a walk, perhaps).
You really can't see the advantage here?
Alternatively I'd get a cheap android smart phone which can do GPS straight off Google Maps so I can set it up whilst stuck in a traffic jam on the bloody M6 around Birmingham.
I'm glad that such systems exist for those who want them. But you're never going to convince me that I do.
Edited by kambites on Thursday 9th June 13:03
Your £90 sat nav won't integrate with the rest of the systems in your car...
Oh god I don't even know why I'm arguing this, my bloody iDrive is currently broken and it's costing me a f**king fortune to fix, and the nav system on it isn't even as good as a £90 bloody tomtom
BMWBen said:
E21_Ross said:
kambites said:
E21_Ross said:
you haven't quite understood my point. if you type the exact address into a sat nav (or google maps) it will NOT take you straight to the house. this is why we had to go on google maps, put in post code, and with the help of someone who has been there, go onto street view to find the exact location to find the coordinates so we could then put it into the sat nav.
Oh I see what you mean. Still typing in GPS coordinates doesn't take any longer than typing in a post code (well maybe a bit longer since it's more digits) and I can take my sat nav to my computer so I don't even need to remember them or write them down. If they'd fit these poncy sat navs to these cars for the cost of a Tom Tom, I might be interested but as long as they're ten times the price (or even worse standard, so you're forced to pay for them) I'll avoid them.
My worry with gadgets is when they break or go wrong years down the line... can be expensive to fix and make cars hard to sell. Progress indeed, nothing wrong with it, if you can choose to use it or not... but can be a pain when it's there to go wrong and you don't need it
Dave
LuS1fer said:
kambites said:
Using a sat nav when driving is a damned slight safer than reading a map, though.
The sat-nav is a map so a small map propped on the dash would be the same, surely? Underlines the point. I can see the route in an atlas in advance and I write a list of roads and exits. It has never failed. A sat-nav has, on more than one occasion, sent me on a ridiculous route to nowhere, often via a stupid route. As an example, taking me off the motorway, down a dual carriageway for a mile or so, round a roundabout, back down the dual carriageway and back onto the motorway....Also, if I'm going out for the day, the last thing I want to do is switch on the computer and go through all that palaver.
your "stupid" route yours took you down...being so careful and old fashioned, did you not check what route it was taking you first?
something doesn't seem right there, either you have a s
t model sat nav, or you entered a via point next to the motorway.you're just being ignorant saying this technology is pointless etc and you don't need it. why bother having mobile phones when we have telephone boxes. why bother having mp3 players when we have portable cd players. why have cd players, the grammaphone was good enough.
technology moves on. and it is generally never for the worse. if it's no benefit to you, it hasn't made you worse off, but it benefits others, making them better for it. if you don't like it, don't use it. but to argue it's useless because you would never use it is a bit silly IMO.
LuS1fer said:
The whole point of sat-nav is you don't have to check it otherwise you might as well use a bloody map.
no, because if you quickly check it's taking you the right way then you're sorted for the whole trip. with a map, you need to check every now and again which means pulling over, stopping, finding where you are on the map then working out where you need to go. unless you carry on driving which is dangerous.no? i no how to read a bloody map, it's not hard, but to say sat nav is pointless because you can just read a map is silly. sat nav is better, there is no denying that. sat navs also allow you to choose what sort of journey it picks, and to avoid certain roads etc. you can even plot in via points. maps are easy, sat navs are easier.
technology is pointless to YOU if YOU don't use it. just because you don't use it, doesn't make it pointless. others find it useful.
you also need to remember that you need maps for certain areas of the country. so if you don't have that area, you have to go out and buy it. many sat navs (like mine) has pretty much all of europe on it.
willing to bet you if i gave you some obscure place address in north wales or scotland and gave you just a map, and you gave me a sat nav, willing to bet i could find it first (without taking cars into account
)Edited by E21_Ross on Thursday 9th June 18:56
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