weedeater

It kinda reminds me of Paris Hilton: overpriced, sexy to look at, but in the end pretty worthless and a waste of time.

bluenoise

And you don't have it?

datmrman

Right on my brother! I agree with you in every aspect. You, bluenoise and I are on the same page.

I've sat in a Benz C-class and BMW M3 and even my girlfriend points out that my navigation is way better.

Will Y.

One friend is disappointed in her new MB E-Class navi too, since she has been in a couple of TLs w/navis. The MB E-Class navi also lacks precise address locations- it only calculates to within a 2-block radius of the given address.

mike03a3

The crappy search capabilities aside, you have hit the problem with your comment. It will indeed eventually offer up ones it knows about, if you ignore the methods suggested for searching and use alternatives as you suggest. As I have said many times, the database is a major problem. It just plain doesn't know about many, many places. So many that, in my opinion, it's totally useless for name searches. It's nice you can get it to find a Home Depot, but when the ones closest to my home don't exist in the database, what good is it?

Last night I ran over to the local Best Buy to buy a DVD set. They were sold out of the one I wanted, so I punched up Best Buy in the nav. I got a ton of categories, none of which had a local one. Next I tried your method. Better. This time it came up with more stores. Too bad the closest ones were in another state.
Just for the hell of it, I just asked for the closest shopping of any kind. No Best Buy, even though I'm in the parking lot. OK, I know where there's a Circuit City, so I'll just go there. Good thing they had it, because this crappy navi couldn't come up with any Circuit City stores within reasonable range using either search method. When I got home I pulled out my Quest, entered Best Buy and it came up with a bunch fairly close, including the one I had gone to first and another that was closer than the Circuit City I drove to. You can apologize for it, and praise it all you want. It still sucks.

As for Acura's poor, tiny, navi department; you need to buy a clue. They don't make the Navi. It's made by Alpine, a major electronics company and OEM supplier to several car manufacturers. There's no excuse for them, they are in the business of making navi systems for others. It is supposed to be one of their areas of expertise. They offer after-market consumer systems as well as portable systems, so they certainly compete with Garmin. They just suck at what they try to do.

kenny5

I wonder how long is the exclusive contract between Honda/Acura and Alpine. It seems to make a lot of sense to drop Alpine when the contract expires, and go with Garmin instead.

Does Alpine make the hardware and software for our navi? The hardware seems decent, but the software/database, like many said, is a POS, particulary when try to do a search. Why can't these software companies design their search engine like Google or Yahoo???

dcrandon

I think Alpine and Honda are in bed with each other. Honda has been using Alpine for their car stereos since the 1980's.

shamen74

Well... what can I say, aside from the personal popshot you took at me "you need to buy a clue", you're probably just a complainer that wouldnt be happy if it was absolutely perfect. I personally don't need the navi to get to best buy, home depot, or target within a 15 mile radius, I know where they all are, but maybe you don't get out much.

Rip the damn thing out and stick a garmin in there if you hate it so much. That would look much nicer I'm sure. Sheezo! LOL! You're entitled to your opinion... guess I'm just not as savy as the complainers. Punch in "Cheers", see what comes up, I'll buy you a beer!

dcrandon

What makes the crappy POI function of the nav so bad for me is that I live in SoCal, which is basically just a 10,000 sq mi city, and I drive all around it about 35,000 mi per year. I can't remember where all the Best Buys or Home Depots are at.

Xpditor

You kids play nice.

Personal attacks are a no-no.

bluenoise

Please, please, try using the 'name by keyword' search to see if it works for you. It has never failed me. It seems to have failed mike03a3, though, so I'm really curious if it solves your issues.

mike03a3

Oh, the method has not failed me - it is easily the best and most accurate way to find what's in the database. What fails is the database. It's annoying that the search methods are so poorly designed and executed, but it's unforgivable that the database is so incomplete.

bluenoise

Ah...I misunderstood what you were saying. Now that I reread your earlier post, I see what you're saying. I'd be frustrated, too, if my database lacked my local stuff as yours seems to do. I'm lucky that my area is pretty well covered by the database such that I still have the original disc from late 2003 and I've only encountered a few errors, mainly due to changes in the way they reworked some ramps and overpasses.

Database issues are certainly worth reporting as that is something that does get updated. It's too bad, though, they charge so much for the new discs.

UT_Vol_Grad

Bump

Ralph Wiggum

This problem is driving me nuts on the '08 TL I just picked up.

I'm bumping this thread on the off chance that a solution has been found over the last year?

GeezerB

iTrader: (1)

Thanks. You forced me to read 4 pages of complaints & I can confirm the 08 hasn't changed. I may keep my Garmin in the car just for it's POI database.

TechGeek

I have a 2008 Tl-S with navigation. This is the first time I have ever used a navigation and I am seeing the same issue. Trying to find a place by name is nearly impossible for some places (Costco, BJ's, etc) mainly because they can have different names. In reading the post I tried to look for a way to set my home state as NY so it looks only near me and not in like Ca or Wa or something. I had to break out the manual and do some reading to see if I was missing anything. I came across this http://mapreporter.navteq.com/dur-web-external/ (page 108 of the navigation manual). It allos us a way to report a missing or incorrect POI. So while this may not fix the issue right now it may provide a fix for future update DVD's if everyone eports any problem they find. Just thought I'd mention it in case no one has seen this before.

mike03a3

Jeez, it's deja vu all over again.

So, a year and a half later, my opinion of the Navi hasn't changed much. It's still a love-hate relationship.

When I want to find someplace by address, I love it. I can quickly and easily enter an address using only my voice and the steering wheel controls. The voice recognition is excellent and the database is pretty good. For some reason it still has areas that are behind my Garmin, which I attribute to the fact that the Alpine uses the same base maps but lacks the extra layer of urban area detail the Garmins have.

But when you want to find a location by name, it's still terrible. And, even with updates, the two main problems persist. First, the search engine logic and catagorization is just plain awful. Then there's the POI database. It is missing many, many places that are in even my old Garmin database. It doesn't know about stores that have been there for many years.

msala524

iTrader: (3)

You guys have to search by city first, then type in the name. Once you input your city it narrows down at the search results to around your area and the closest to your navi. Try doing that, its full proof.

WhiteLegend

Does the 08 Navi come with that feature? My 05 Navi, I don't how to narrow down by city when searching for places.

My home state is selected correctly.

msala524

iTrader: (3)

yea it allows me to choose category, name, city, and other one which I forget...

WhiteLegend

Ok, the 04-06 Navi only let you choose Name, Category and Phone Number (which is totally useless).

A SiQ TL

No, you can choose by city also.
Select Menu>places>category>restaurant> the type of food you want (fast food,chinese,all)
then it gives you the option of,

Place name by keyword
sort by distance to travel
A city vicinity
place name

if you choose A city vicinity, it asks you to type in the city you want to search.

WhiteLegend

Yeah, I know what you're saying. I wish we didn't have to go thru the categories to get to city. The Navigation systems I've used in the past all allows city to be the first criteria. That way we avoid the issue of the same places (i.e. McDonalds) categorized differently in different cities. Which is very common with this database.

Ralph Wiggum

That's another gripe of mine. How hard can it possibly be for them to maintain one naming and categorization convention for national chains. A simple edit and replace in the database could change every "McDonalds" to "McDonald's" or "Wal-mart" to "WalMart." It's just sloppy to allow for so many different versions.

mike03a3

It's not fool proof enough to compensate for the fools that compiled the database. No variation of search strategy will locate something that isn't in the database to begin with.