I just purchased a preowned ML-320 with Navigation. When I get in the area I bought it from I see street names, what looks to be parks, and some really good mapping. When I travel to a nearby town which has been around alot longer... nothing... no streets... no names where there is streets. I see the satelite icon in the upper lefthand corner and there is signal.

Bob

 

Is the missing town a small, insignificant one? A city's age doesn't really matter for inclusion in mapsets. Only so much can be done. Not every road ever created can be included.

 

If you are familiar with my area.... Pottstown shows up as a street level (almost every street). When I travel to Reading, Allentown, Bethlehem... Hardly anything comes up but main streets. Does the naviagtion get smarter in the area it is located? I am going to purchase the 2004 disc and hope it helps with my problem. I check the configuration menu and I could see nothing.

Bob

 

You should have it in Arkansas (my 2002.1 version). It doesn't even know the state capitol (Little Rock) at street level. The only towns in Arkansas it knows at street level are about 30 small towns with populations of about 200 or less people - why I do not know, maybe someone important in the MB world lives in those places. Interestingly enough, Navteq also makes my Lexus nav maps which do have every road ever created, including people's 911 driveway names that aren't really roads. I called Navteq last week and they say MB decides the level of coverage they want to provide to the owners from a subset of just the bare highways down to alleyway and dirt road level. Apparently MB thinks we do not need anything but the bare level. They claim the 2004.1 and the next release next March are much higher levels. I have ordered me a 2004.1 disk (the most recent for the ML series MCS units) so I guess we will see. My dealer says for me to not hold my breath,as he has seen the release and saw nothing new in my area.

 

Well at least I am not alone... I beginning to think perhaps there was something wrong with my unit. I just could not understand how a small town had 100% coverage which includes what looks like golf courses or parks and the town I work in which is much older has almost no coverage. I wonder if the DVD version will have more coverage and that might entice more sales? I am going to try a backup first... I would hate to pay 300.00+ dollars at the stealership only to find my city is still not covered. It all makes **** for trying to navigate addresses.

Bob

 

I don't use M-B nav. Too expensive and too weak at the same time. The GPS I use comes with standard mapsets. I can optionally install much more detailed mapsets of areas I choose. Does M-B work that way as well, or is it just the one CD/DVD?

 

True. Mine can get me to the nearest state highway from my house, but of course thats the only address you can enter as well since there are no streets in my city of about 40K people so no individual street addresses can be entered. I have bought a DVD drive and 2004.1 DVD disk that should be in tomorrow so I can upgrade and get rid of the CD version so that traveling across country will be better, but the dealer said the dvd version and cd versions of the same release year were the same coverages. He says he has heard the 2006 version for our ML's will have a whole lot of new coverage - more than the 2002-2004 versions. He said the 2004 version has tons more coverage of other areas of the country than the 2002 version had, just not Arkansas. What I cannot understand is that since they have had access to all this data all along - from the lips of a Navteq customer service rep (even my old Toyota Camry nav unit from 2004 with a 2003 dvd had dirt road level coverage) , why have they purposefully chosen not to include it? Is it because they want to sell updates at enormous prices every year, or some other reason that makes no sense? Anyway, maybe the 2004 version would have better coverage in your area. You can get them off ebay decently cheap, or at least much cheaper than the dealership. Are you DVD or CD?

 

It's probably memory limitations. I know you can buy a gazillion-bits of memory in the recent past for mere pennies, but if you're pinching pennies for the stock holders and buying millions of pieces, you can save significant amounts of money by spending the least amount possible and the only people hurt are the customers.

I wonder if the Euro coverage is better? Mine started with full coverage of the US before it went to Europe. I even have hiking trails on my maps.

 

It was my impression that 2004.1 is the latest CD version and 2005 is the latest DVD version. I heard that they will not be supporting updates to the CD version. Can anyone tell me if I am wrong?

Bob

 

I have heard that they are going to quit doing the CD updates in the future, that is why I went ahead and bought a dvd drive and disk. Dealer said he thought the 05 DVD version still used the 2004.1 map data but had updated POI info. Could be wrong though. I just bought the 2004.1 dvd, and will buy the March 06 release when it is supposed to be a big release or so they claim.

The memory thing could have been it or the bottom line profit thing is probably what they were doing. They probably had to only pay NAVTEQ a fraction of the price that Toyota paid for their full blown map data, thereby making a larger return to their bottom line by cheaping out the customers. Most customers would never know the difference unless they had used another product like yours or like my Toyota and Lexus, but now that everyone is starting to complain and knows about the limitations they are going ahead and providing the better data - of course we are paying for it at around $300 to update to it. I say if I am going to be the one paying for it, then go ahead and charge me for it but at least give me the whole thing at once like Toyota does.