back on board

[roverman]

Picked up the new - used LR3 Friday, seems like a Larry to me...so Larry it is. '05 SE, tonga green. Drove it 700 miles home and as expected was rock solid, except for the roaring old HPs. Put some new Michelins on yesterday and life is good. Averaged 19.8 mpg @ 75 along the way.
It has the nav...which i thought would be fun (and help the resale someday). I've never had an in car GPS so I didn't know what to expect, but I must say it is much less useful...and harder to figure out than the cubby space it replaces. It's mindblowing to me that a $400 Garmin and even my PPC cell phone are far superior at navigating and finding restaurants and gas along the way. 700 miles...650 of it on the same expressway, and it must have announced 60 some odd times "continue on the I 7 5 North". Every time I crossed over any other highway..."BING...not that you were going to, but don't take the highway we are passing" And then graphically shows the countdown to the hwy you don't care about. Laughably stupid. Also, showing the upcoming exits and a fork and knife were nice features, but no way to know what kind of restaurants there were? Again, 1000 times better with the Garmin. (end of rant)
Waste of storage space aside, it's a really great truck and I'm happy to be back on board.

 

[richpike]

Nice - congrats! I believe most of those annoyances on the nav can be turned off. If your LR3 didn't come with a manual, you can download soft copies here:

http://www.ownerinfo.landrover.com/extfree2viewlrprod/index.jsp

What kind of Michelins did you put on it?

-Rich

 

[toddjb122]

Give the NAV some time, you'll get used to it. I love it. I have turned off all audio alarms and you can customize the points of interest to suit your needs. If the database knows what kind of restaurant it is, it'll show you a different symbol...you can also highlight the symbol for restaurant name and info. Anyway, I find it very useful....play around with it.

 

[roverman]

Yeah, I have the manual. I breezed through it, but it looks like I'm gonna have to go through it with a highlighter It's just too bad it's not more intuitive. Heck, all they'd have to do is buy a Garmin and copy it, lol.
I put on my Cross Terrains that I took off of my lease when I turned it in. 275 55 18...i think.
Love the xenons by the way, never had those before either...

 

[toddjb122]

Speaking of NAVs, I do wish there was a standard way to share points of interest or download them. I'm already loathing the day in the future when I move to a new NAV system and will have to leave all my carefully marked points behind on my current vehicle.

(I use marked points a lot)

They should have memory card slots so you can easily import/export markers or other POI data. Imagine that....you plan an entire trip on your PC using Google Maps or some other software, it saves a "route file" for you, and you conveniently take it out to your vehicle or have the car grab it off your ipod.

 

[roverman]

I just discovered windows live for my ppc. It finds your gps location and tells you EVERYTHING you need to know. Nearby gas prices, movies and times, restaurants, traffic and a million more things with phone numbers, directions etc...simply amazing. I absolutely love gadgets...too bad car companies are (all) a mile behind. You're right, an SD slot would be a no brainer, or a writable dvd or some such thing. It's crazy how few cars even have MP3 or aux plugs...They've only been popular for a decade or so now.