Paul,

My wife and I use our Accord's nav system daily. From my daily commute to scoping out new neighborhoods while searching for new homes - it's invaluable.

For starters, my wife and I never have to discuss which route is better. Miss a turn or an exit?, the nav system just recalculates on the fly, complete with distance and time to destination. For house hunting, we just put in several addresses and the nav system plots the quickest routes between the homes - something real estate agents should invest in. It also does a pretty good job at finding places (restaurants, post offices, malls, airports, etc) closest to your current location. Elevation, latitude, and longitude is a bit of overkill, but it's there if you need it.

Since my nav system doesn't provide traffic updates, I've been using Google's mobile maps and traffic updates via my cell phone. Having the car's nav system calculate the quickest route based on traffic would be a welcome addition.

My only two complaints are that it costs about $180 to upgrade the DVD, put out annually, with updated roads and businesses. Our DVD is three years old and we haven't updated due to the price. Also, the business search function could learn a bit from Google. If you're looking for a business you need to know it's exact name and spelling (i.e. is it "In and Out Burger", "In n out", etc - for the record: it's "In-n-out"; don't forget the dashes).

My 2 cents,
Joe

We also use ours daily. On a recent cross-country drive, the Honda Nav in our Odyssey saved us from getting horribly lost many times. It was also great at finding the nearest coffee, food, etc.

Maybe the Honda interface is just easier to use than BMW's? I find Honda/Acura owners do tend to use theirs.

--Treb

I use my BMW 325 iDrive daily. I looked at adding a bluetooth GPS to my PPC-6700 phone and/or getting a portable handheld GPS like Tomtom or Trimble. Sure, they are a little more state-of-the-art, but who wants the kludge of wires, cables, power adapters, clip-ons, etc. and/or adding something to a cellphone that interrupts using it as a phone.

The BMW is one of the best I've tried. It's still got a lot of warts, but with the bluetooth handsfree integration with my cellphone, and the voice interface (which actually works ok if you bother to learn the basics) it is very useful.

I use the NAV everywhere I go - often I turn off the voice turn-by-turn directions and just keep the map and visual next-turn up (the BMW split-screen is unique and very nice that way). the ETA information alone is helpful to plan my arrival and know whether I need to lead-foot it more or just kick-back and relax.

Realt-time traffic integration would be nice; currently, I just exit the freeway, hit the "avoid highways option" and let it recalc the route.

The biggest limitation is that car designers aren't seeing the holistic system yet.

Why doesn't it have a USB port? I could just plug in a 1 or 2GB USB stick and instantly have my music. Why doesn't it have a PC port? It would be so much easier to just download my phonebook from my phone into the console instead of all the bluetooth pairing shenanagins.

Why don't they replace the friggin' CD player drive with a DVD-ROM (for music) - as a MP3 a DVD will hold almost 4GB of burned music versus 600MB on a CD. (Actually, a nice touch in the BMW is that you CAN put a data MP3 into the DVD drive by removing the maps and play your music, but that means choosing - music or nav, but not both.)

Why can't my PocketPC phone use the in-dash screen as an external display? That would be awesome (when "not driving", of course :-)

etc. etc. etc.

Microsoft had the concept with the "autoPC" many years ago, but the execution sucked and the features were lacking.

in car computing (not just nav but entertainment, comm, et. al.) is probably going to be the next growth area -- nobody's talking about it yet, but the current "silent growth phase" will explode once the cars in the $10 to $20 range start adding nav and digital music too.

I don't have a true car nav system, but I do have one on my Verizon phone (VZW Navigator). When I'm in San Diego I generally know where I'm going, but when I'm traveling for business it's extremely valuable.

-Todd

I flew in and out and had 3 meetings in Detroit in one day and loved the Hertz nav..in Manhattan another time it made me go round the same block 3 times then started yelling at me when I finally ignored it...

Paul,
We are using the , now out dated, Magelan Nav 750 navigation system for more than 6 years. It served us very well throughout the years and made our trips much more relaxed.

Interesting data you've gathered vs. my experience and my random sampling. We all use it regularly. I've found hotels, ATM's, and restaurants too in the Odyssey. It's a great comfort tool to simply print or write down an address and hit the road. Real-time traffic full integration is so logical and necessary that it angers me that it's not offered in all cases. Although now that I live in Des Moines, it's not offered and not needed :)

I've never understood the need for one. I can't think of a single time that I was sitting in my car and I needed directions. I either plan ahead or 99% of the time I'm going places I already are familiar with.

Note to self: Don't ask about nav systems at end of summer driving season. Everyone is convinced that they're invaluable.

More seriously, I'm a little baffled at all these Nav fans. Do you drive in so many places that you don't know? Or do you not know your way around your city/town?

Or is this a higher-brain manifestation of the cellphone contact list phenomenon, one where once you find a tool for a specific set of memory tasks you immediately forget that entire set of data -- phone numbers in the cellphone case, and maps/directions in the Nav case?

Paul,

Do you or do you not own one? Is all your evidence based on your own pre-conception? At least the commenters that own one are actually "convinced" they're valuable, and not just "increasingly convinced" that they are not.

Listen to your commenters. Take them at face value.

I've had it for 6 years in an Odyssey. It's useful. Easily worth the extra $2k, alright?

You have a young kid, right? Ever take him to a birthday party at a friend's house or at some Gymboree in a mall you've never been to? Useful scenario for GPS nav.

My wife is not great at directions, she uses it all the time - not just the end of summer.

I do agree that real time traffic will be a great add-on.

Paul,

Yes, in my case I spend a lot of time in cities I don't know my way around (Talking to mobile phone companies).

I don't tend to use it in San Diego.

-Todd

I'm a big fan of Japanese electronics.

When I was in Tokyo in 2004 we drove through Tokyo out into the mountains. The device in my friends car had automatic toll booth payment (ETf), real-time traffic information, and GPS directions built into the device. It was quite advanced at the time, and I haven't seen what the latest devices can do but from that experience of driving through poorly planned, unkown areas it was saved a lot of headache.

A great idea to build into these devices would be a parking locator, imagine driving directly to the closest open parking space in an area.

As for use within a mile of your home or other well-known location it may not provide much value. But the moment you are traveling to a restaurant, or location outside your mental-map of an area it can save anywhere from a couple minutes to hours.

Eric

John --

Wasn't being mysterious about having a Nav system. In short, I don't own one. Looked at one when buying a car recently, and decided I don't get lost often enough to warrant it.

Anyway, this all started when I asked around with a number of Nav users offline, most of whom guiltily confessed that they rarely use 'em. That, of course, made me curious. And the answers above have been fascinating.

I think Nav is pretty useful - a lot of Japanese OEMs are doing a good job keeping it simple and touchscreen-based. Lexus and Acura are good exmaples. I use mine about 1-2 a week and find it very useful on roadtrips or finding a restt or friend's place for the first few times. You do get dependent on it, like cellphone contact lists.

The real winner in this space will be Navteq and to a lesser extent, TeleAtlas. They have the high barriers to entry, toll-booth type business model (like Windows), regardless of which device guys win or lose share.

Ultimately, though, this functionality should converge on mobile devices with speech input etc. There's no reason to pay PC-type prices for a car-only, limited use device when this can be built into a multi-purpose device with mobile comms, video, music etc. that can be used in more scenarios (e.g. location-based services, eventually). maybe the device docks to a larger screen in the car, but that could be resolved through standards work. this might take 5 years or so to materialize, and again, navteq and teleatlas will be the ultimate winners in the space.

I live on the Northeast side of Chicago. Traffic reports and routing don't have a use for me. There are only two ways to go and their both congested. I pretty much know my city -- but a map fills in the blanks. I don't need a piece of electronics that needs $180 update every year. I did hear one couple found a positive use for it. Instead of arguing with each other about the right route to take, they turn on the navigation system critque the ridicoulous routes suggested by the gps. It has reduced marital friction by 80%.

It's the problem of mass adoption. Once enough of the traffic participants have the same traffic rerouting systems -- they become inoperative because everybody is trying to reroute simultaneously.

Oh yea, I know La Jolla and it's pretty damned hard to get lost there.

I use my Garmin 7200 everyday for commuting through the daily Los Angeles grid lock. If there is traffic ahead it reroutes automatically to avoid it. It's good and is only going to get better as more realtime traffic sources come online. The Garmin 7200 plays MP3's, has XM radio and has provision for video input (ie. Backup camera,etc). The interface is touch screen based, software upgradable and works great.

I cruise home listening to Cramer, avoiding traffic and thanking Garmin for making such a great product.

I currently don't own a GPS device but am definitely in the market for one at the moment, looking pretty hard at the TomTom ONE-- it's got great features and allows you to start using it immediatly without downloading a bunch of complicated software-- The price point looks excellent to at a modest $499!

Kedrosky said "I don't get lost often enough to warrant it."

It's not a metter of getting lost. My Garmin simply makes my driving much more efficient. It helps me through complex or badly marked interchanges and helps me find the correct on-ramps quickly. I don't have to look at it while driving. It voice-prompts me as in "Turn left 200 metres (or feet in America)", or "You have arrived". It also steers me to the correct one-way streets downtown.

RJ -- I'm sure you're right, but I just don't see how it would change anything here in San Diego. Maybe it's more of an east coast thing, where you have city grids full of one-way streets like mazes of twisting passages, all alike?

In general, I'd be curious whether in-car GPS systems sell better on the east coast than on the west coast. My hunch is that they sell better on the former.

There are myriad reasons to have a GPS. Only stoneagers poo-poo the technology. I use mine every time I get in the car to find alternate routes to avoid traffic, to identify better routes to any given destination, to get around and through cities never visted before, etc. I have allways prided myself in my sense of direction, but I wouldn't have another vehicle without GPS. Try it - you'll like it. If you don't you might as well surrender your telephone and all those other gadgets...

GPS systems should include weather warnings as well as traffic warnings. The technology is there. Why drive in a mess if you don't need too. In L.A. I guess that's just the way it is...