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Just wondering how old is the map I just bought. Received and installed on 4250 without any problem. However, after purchasing this product in May,09, I found out that Magellan releases the new 2009 Spring Map.
This gives her at least another year of using a unit that she would not trade for my Tom-Tom (my personal preference) or the Cobera GPS that I got on Woot. This was an update program for my wife's Magellan GPS unit. After a little head scratching I figured out how to install it and it works quiet well.
My house, built over a year ago, is not on the older maps, as well as the road that runs to my house so I have to wait until I'm several milesa way before entering an address. they don't have the new update installed in them yet. so we're wringing our hands deciding whether to take the risk again. This completely crashed our GPS and turned it into a brick. At $79.99 per update (which might wipe your GPS clean), I'd go to another GPS brand altogether. We tried hacking the system per some websites to reload the hard-drive and firmware, but nothing resolved it. Magellan would not accept it back as it is not under warranty anymore, even though THEIR update crashed it. We had to buy a new GPS, which by the way.
I whish they had addressed the issues with the AI voice recognition system as it is still worthless. Other than that the interface looks just the same. Also the Enter Address navigation screen has an option upfront to navigate to previously entered Points.
The upgrade process is for the most part easy to follow, but takes a long time. This alone makes it worth the upgrade as previously I would miss a turn especially at a busy intersection because it was hard to understand the manuever. This update refreshes the Magellan PNDs with a much needed map update.
Now with the arrow showing the way it makes it easier to follow the next step. Overall I'm not too satisfied with this product, the upgrade should be given to Magellan customers free of charge or at least nominal charge of say no more than $20.00, everyone else is following suit at making map upgrades cheaper and so should Magellan. Make sure to apply the lates firmware patch from the Magellan site as the upgrade includes an older version.
The only difference that I notice after the upgrade (aside from new maps of course) is the addition of an arrow tracer pointer that walks you through upcoming turns and streets.
any termination of the upgrade process before completion could render your unit unusable. it takes a couple of hours to run, 2). the upgrade will not start if it detects that the unit is not fully charged, and 3). Truthfully, I was not particularly enthused about having to update a barely year old GPS system (and having to pay for the priviledge), but if you want your points of interest/road layouts and such to be more recent - notice I didn't say current - it doesn't hurt too much if you find the upgrade for a decent price. Have a nice day. There is at least one obvious enhancement: the turn arrow displayed when you are heading to a destination is large and orange now (as opposed to smaller and green). I can get rid of some of the saved destinations I had to enter because they didn't show up on the old version, but probably won't bother. I would strongly suggest having a wall adaptor plugged in when upgrading your unit, because 1).
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