I sent the following to Acura, but thought it might be worth posting here too.
-------------------------------------------------- Whereas I love my 2005 Acura TL, I feel that Acura should be ashamed and embarrassed about the coverage of the navigation system. I live in and bought my TL in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and on my very first road trip out of town was very disappointed to learn that the area I was visiting did not appear on the map. It happens to be a fairly common and important route here in Alberta (specifically the Crowsnest Highway between Fort Macleod and Fernie, BC). It was also at least two years behind on some major road upgrades right here in Calgary (e.g. the Highway 2 extension south of town)! To add to the confusion, when on the Crowsnest Highway and requesting directions home to Calgary, the navigation system plotted a route to the nearest US border crossing in Idaho and then on a long, circuitous route through the US (1200km) for a simple 200km trip!
Now if navigation systems were a new invention, this might have been excusable. However, they have been around for a while. In fact, whereas I paid $3300 for the navigation system in my TL, for $100 I can buy software (e.g. Microsoft's Streets and Trips 2005) that has MUCH more information. I took the MS software with my laptop on another recent road trip, and that software had information for many tiny centres in Alberta that are not even on the map in the TL. For another $50, it also includes a GPS receiver, so for $150 I turn my laptop into a navigation system that has so much more information in its database that the makers of the TL navigation system should be embarrassed. Now, whereas I realize that the TL's navigation system is integrated into other functions in the car, the cost is such that I could spend significantly less to buy the aforementioned software AND a laptop to run it on! What's more, Microsoft's Streets and Trips
2005 will run on Windows CE devices, which I understand is what's running the TL navigation system as well.All-in-all, as I said, I love my TL, but the database in the navigation system should leave Acura embarrassed!
Thanks for listening! Brad.
P.S. Please don't recommend that I get a "Navi Update", since 1) as far as I can tell, my 2005 TL already has the latest available, and 2) the price of the update should be another embarrassment. $280 for the upgrade?!? That's another slap in the face when compared to the commercial, off-the-shelf software competition.