twister

Indeed!!!

Everybody told me the same thing regarding NAV. If you never had it, you don't know what you are missing. But, once you get it, you can not imagine your life without it. I did not get NAV with my PP+. Currently, the car is only for my short home-to-work-and-back commute. Our other "traveling" car is my wife's '05 Highlander which doesn't have it. So, in my case it makes more sense to get $500 portable TomTom which can be shared between two cars.

I also don't feel too crazy about getting a piece of a hi-tech equipment into my car which I'm planning to own for 9-10 years. It will be obsolete in 2-3 years, probably replaced with some cool trans-lucent navigation technology you can project from your dashboard on to a windshield, or something like that I'm also hoping someone will combine radar detector with a portable NAV. This will eliminate two pieces into one...

PsychDoc

Just a bit of an update. On my recent trip to Montreal and the Lake George area the NAV system proved to be a real disappointment. We tried to use it to call two movie theaters and both numbers were incorrect. On the way back to NYC it kept prompting us to get off a major turnpike (Rt. 87) and go on local roads when clearly the most direct and quickest route was to stay on 87. As we approached the city I foolishly heeded this advice (stupid me, I should have known better having disregarded it for the previous 75 miles) and ended up being guided through over 17 miles of crappy local streets replete with stoplights every two blocks.

I had it programmed to accept freeways and toll roads so there was nothing that I'm aware of in my settings that would have caused this screw up.

All in all, VERY (!!!) disappointing for a presumably "up to the second" fifth generation unit.

twister

PsychDoc, thanks for the update!!! Now you need to head over to Kaius88 thread and give him a professional advice (unless you just play a doctor here at ClubLexus and not in real life?)

Since we are on a topic of NAV, would anybody care to share their experience with portable NAV units? Most of the on-line and magazine reviews rave about TomTom. Anybody using it?

edit: you already replied to Kaius88 thread. sorry, I should of read it first

ckon

Did you by any chance have it set to "shortest" instead of "quick"?

PsychDoc

I don't think so, but I'm not 100% sure.

It would be reassuring if that was the explanation.

Perhaps it is.

CaBlonde

Psychdoc, I was just listening to the instructional CDs on the NAV system yesterday morning. I got halfway through it but I did learn that there are three settings - Quick 1, Quick 2 and Shortest distance. It defaults to Quick 1, which is the quickest route, unless you have changed your settings. I haven't used the NAV too much yet but that is very disappointing if that is how it guides us to our destination.