Garmin nüMaps Lifetime™ Europe update

Garmin nüMaps Lifetime™ Europe update

Author
Discussion

nickwilcock

Original Poster:

1,522 posts

248 months

Thursday 16th July 2009
quotequote all
Anyone know when the next update is due? The version I have is CNE NT 2010.10 which was released in early April 2009.

As there are 4 updates per year, shouldn't the next one have been released by now?

The Garmin website is as useless as ever in providing any information.

nickwilcock

Original Poster:

1,522 posts

248 months

Wednesday 22nd July 2009
quotequote all
Still no news......

As it can take about 4 hours to download and install and requires over 7Gb of computer file space, I'm keen to get the latest maps before I go to the continent in a few weeks time.

marshalla

15,902 posts

202 months

Tuesday 28th July 2009
quotequote all
It says "Download the newest data as often as every three months."

a bit like "up to 8Mb"....

nickwilcock

Original Poster:

1,522 posts

248 months

Tuesday 11th August 2009
quotequote all
I've had a reply from Garmin - the next map update will be released "in September", it seems.


nickwilcock

Original Poster:

1,522 posts

248 months

Monday 14th September 2009
quotequote all
After another nudge, Garmin now say that the next update won't be available until October 2009.

That's 6 months after the last one - and yet the product overview states "Simply enter the product key into MyGarmin and download your new set of map updates every three months."

Perhaps it's time to ask the Consumers' Association to look into this?

nickwilcock

Original Poster:

1,522 posts

248 months

Thursday 15th October 2009
quotequote all
Well, the latest promise from Garmin is that they 'hope' that the next release will be out on 21 Oct 2009.....

When I asked them yesterday about their 'quarterly update' statement, they told me that there was no such thing - indeed I discovered that they'd changed the wording 'Simply enter the product key into MyGarmin and download your new set of map updates every three months..' to read 'Simply enter the product key into MyGarmin and download your new set of map updates up to four times a year..' However, when looking around their website, I found a page header clearly advertising '...quarterly map updates for your sat-nav for the life of your Garmin', which I told them supported other promises made in Garmin e-mails to me.

But today they'd changed the header to read '...up to 4 times a year map updates for your sat-nav for the life of your Garmin'

Changing the terms of an offer after a contract has been agreed is serious stuff - I shall be asking Garmin what compensation they intend to offer for having sold their product in such a misleading way.

nickwilcock

Original Poster:

1,522 posts

248 months

Wednesday 21st October 2009
quotequote all
Well, Garmin finally released the latest City Navigator NT Europe mapping update today.

I've been downloading it on Virgin's so-called high-speed broadband and so far it's taken 5.5 hours to downlaod 61%....... Started off reasonably well, but after 90 min, stagnated to around 50-60KB/s.

After which it'll have to be 'extracted' to the computer, then at least another 2 hours to send the maps to the GPS.

Why is it so glacially slow? It isn't my Internet connection as I can still see news videos acceptably well on another PC.

marshalla

15,902 posts

202 months

Thursday 22nd October 2009
quotequote all
nickwilcock said:
Why is it so glacially slow? It isn't my Internet connection as I can still see news videos acceptably well on another PC.
'cos everyone else is now downloading it too and Garmin's servers are overloaded ? Either that or Virgin are capping your traffic on the port in use for the download because it's so big.

nickwilcock

Original Poster:

1,522 posts

248 months

Friday 23rd October 2009
quotequote all
Most likely to gave been Garmin's servers.

Eventaully, after some 8 hours, the download was complete. Then another 90+ minutes to 'extract' the file.

When I came to launch it, the Garmin note advised that the latest maps are bigger than my GPS memory, so I would need to choose a specific region. Top marks, Garmin, for pushing out a non-compatible update....

I chose 'Western Europe'. Then the Garmin note told me I needed to free up a further 2835 Mb to proceed. By my calculation, this download seems to require over 12 Gb of free C-drive space - on the computer I use, that's nearly 70% of the total C-drive just for a map update.

So I've now asked them to send me the update on DVD. To require such a colossal amount of disk space just for a map update is totally unreasonable.

marshalla

15,902 posts

202 months

Friday 23rd October 2009
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Sounds like they're sending complete new maps for the whole world, including all POI data.

peterguk M500

2,615 posts

218 months

Friday 23rd October 2009
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nickwilcock said:
generally moaning about everything
nickwilcock said:
To require such a colossal amount of disk space just for a map update is totally unreasonable.
Hardly Garmin's fault... Maybe we should petition for less changes for the road system...

nickwilcock

Original Poster:

1,522 posts

248 months

Friday 23rd October 2009
quotequote all
It isn't the number of changes which decides the download size. They have probably added extra map coverage, detail or more 'POIs' which has caused this large increase.

But it now means that the download system disk requirement has increased to such an extent that on-line delivery is no longer an acceptable method for issuing updates. Last time it required around 7.5Gb which was bad enough, but 12Gb is absurd.

However, Garmin have been very helpful with their replies.