Back to 2.5 ?

[martike]

Following my criticism of the User Manual for version 3 in another topic, here are some things I can't find in it :

1. Managment of favourites. In another topic on this board I've found instructions on how to delete a favourite, but I can't find any mention of this in the User Manual. Also, is there a way to group favourites in different categories ? I may want to keep my personal favourites apart from my business favourites.

2. How can I delete a route ? The software remembers the last route calculated, or at least the last arrival and departure points, but I can't figure out how to simply remove these and start with a clean map. This was a specific function in 2.5.

3. When I select Driving Instructions, the up and down arrows allow me to follow the route step-by-step, but how can I skip up and down ? In 2.5 a slide bar was used to advance or return, but now there are only the step arrows.

Can anyone help, please ?

Version 3 appears to be only an upgrade to the menu system rather than the main functions, but I'm not really sure it's an improvement.

I prefer the previous drop-down menu approach where all options are clearly available.

The new approach is more like those telephone answering systems where you're offered a choice, then another one, then another one, and so on, and there's no way to short-cut it and go directly to where you want to be. This may be user-friendly to new or occasional users, but it's very tedious for regular users.

And in implementing this new approach, as well as adding a few new functions, they've dropped (or perhaps just left out of the choices) some of the very useful old ones.

I'm seriously considering returning to version 2.5

[jblackmore]

I stuck with 2.5 for ages, to wait to see if anyone complained much about 3.1 ,and just upgraded this morning.

So far I have to agree with you that I hate it, and find the options a bit annoying, its ifine to have these big pretty buttons for when your driving, but it would be nice to have the old menus as well - which would be perfectly easy to have both.

I plan to stick with v3.1 for a while to see if it grows on me, as apart from anything else, I imagine trying to go back to 2.5 without losing loads of POIs etc would be tricky !

[jblackmore]

Tried to use 3.51 at weekend and it drives me mad, selecting POIs takes forever, adding a POI is so awkward it defeats the whole point, and generally it is unusable.

As for navigation - the pointless + - symbols are just annoying (up down on the navigation keys does this anyway), and time to destination seems to have a mind of its own, at one point it said 1hr 23 mins to destination (13 miles), a few seconds later it said 7 minutes !!

Has anyone downgraded to 2.51 - did you manage not to lose POIs etc ?

I will have a go at this and let you know how I get on !

James.

[jblackmore]

This was slightly more painful than I had hoped.

You can simply run the 2.50 install and this works, however I didn't have enough memory to use my normal maps.

This is because there are a bunch of files 3.51 installs which you need to delete manually before you reinstall 2.50.

if you use filez and list files by size you just need to delete all the obvious mapsonic files, and also check creation dates (I knew I upgraded to 3.51 on 4th August luckily).

If you leave all the POI files alone, then these will still work when you have re-installed 2.51.

Also, don't forget to delete all the foreign languages you don't need (SPANISH, FRENCH, GERMAN, DUTCH etc, as this saves a bunch of memory and I don't understand why the mapsonic install doesn't check language before copying all these pointless files onto the pda - just laziness I guess !

[martike]

Thanks for the information. ViaMichelin is sort of on probation with me at the moment - if it goes wrong again and leaves me stranded, then I'm definitely going to get rid of it, but rather than revert to 2.5 I think I'll cut my losses, throw it out, and go for Tom-Tom.

Of course, if it continues to work, then I suppose I'll get used to using the new interface. I don't like it, but I don't have to use it very often, so I guess I can learn to live with it.

What annoys me most is the amateurish way that Michelin (otherwise a reputable company) approaches the sale and support of its Navigation product. It even makes Microsoft look good !

[jblackmore]

[martike]

Ooops, I see your point about Formula 1, but I was thinking about their maps, guides, and so on. Their website also has a very good route planner. But their software just doesn't make the grade.

[martike]

I've reverted to version 2.5 and I'm back to being quite happy with the ViaMichelin product. It's far from perfect, and I particularly dislike the absence of waypoints, but I can live with it. Version 3 was just so damn annoying that it had to go. I really am not able to identify anything in version 3 which I considered to be an improvement, and which I will now miss.

Only one residual problem, and that's a Pocket PC one, rather than ViaMichelin : On my Programs menu I now have two icons, one for version 2.5 which displays the Mapsonic logo, and one for version 3 which displays the little Michelin man. This version 3 one doesn't work of course because there's no longer an application behind it, but how can I remove it from my Programs menu ?

[martike]

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