Folks,

I did some searching and most of my searches came up w/ threads that were a couple of years old so i'm hoping the nav's been improved. Is it true you can't have the screen show the car point "up" but rather north always points up? Also - any other features common on todays nav's that the MB one doesn't have (liken the old useless radio scanning of the steering wheel buttons)?????

thx in advance.

Aceman

No, not true. There is a way to change from up always being north the the car always facing up. I tried this once and didn't like it because the screen always seemed to jump around every time I took a corner. It's not hard to do, just check the preferences. When I go out for lunch, I'll figure it out.

yeah, I just accidentally found this feature while playing with the Nav the other day... I prefer it, but it does get jumpy during turns. With the car not infront of me, I can't tell you the exact sequence of buttons, but Xraymd has it.. it's some place in the preferences..

Does the nav on the W211 offer offer an "oblique", a/k/a "perspective", a/k/a "birds eye", a/k/a "not directly overhead", view?

I've toyed with the idea of having Steve the Wizard add nav to my car on one of his trips to the Left Coast, mostly for the amusement factor, but not if the best I would get is Navigation 1.0. Most Japanese cars are on Navigation 2.0 and the Acura RL is Navigation 3.0, if you're lucky enough to live in one of the 20 regions with real-time traffic information information integrated into the nav. I don't.

Sorry DWP, no "bird's eye view", unless the bird is flying directly over the car looking straight down

In either map or nav mode, hit the display button (2nd one down on the right). Then hit view (2nd one down on the left). Your choices are "north up" or "heading up".

it's always depressing to see what the rice burners have in technology in contrast to the sour kraut burners..

S-class - CL and SL DVD comands are manufactured by Siemens...those all have "3D view" aka "birdseye view".

The E-class DVD comand is manufactured by Becker and the unit is the same as the ones in the CLS and the SLK (except for the faceplate) and these do not have "3D view".

We also have a toyota minivan as baby hauler, and sorry to say its navigation is light years ahead of the one on my W211. We're talking about a minivan, not a fancy $60k fully loaded Lexus. Some of the features that MB doesn't have:

1. Touch screen. A very precise one, not the crappy one found on $50 PDAs.
2. Ability to search destination based on phone number. Punch in John Doe's Pizza's phone number, up comes the address and map location.
3. Footprint map. This is like a very fined detailed map that will show buildings with actual shapes. Click on the building and you get the business name, address, phone number. Plus the street is shown with actual number of lanes.
4. Route guidance give you 3 routes, for shortest or fastest options.
5. Route guidance to exact house number, not a block.
6. Much better point of interest database and search speed (dramatic difference).
7. Dual map display where you can have split screen map, each one with independent control. so you can scale one to show overall trip, and another to show street level details.
8. The overall interface is just more user friendly. The map updates quicker, almost in real time. Where as the W211 nagivation "jumps" every second while car's moving.

There may be other features I didn't list. But I think touch screen is the most important feature. It makes the whole system much more intuitive. I have not opened the Toyota manual yet and I know pretty much where all the features are. But for the MB nav, even simple task like changing the always north display discussed above requires digging into layers of menus (on toyota just press the compass on the map).

hi
i am looking at a 2006 350.
is the comand standard?
i see a navigation option on the m.b website and was wondering (after i read a thread that navigation can be fitted afterwards) if it is cheaper to fit it later?
thanks