Comments on: Newsflash! Sony sat-nav “still an absolute piece of shit”

By: Gary

Gary — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 08:39:51 +0000

I agree. I’ve removed the offending posts and disabled further comments.

By: mupwangle

mupwangle — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 02:14:11 +0000

Surely, by now, this conversation must breach about a billion new laws on copyright. I would’ve thought that offering to give free copies of obviously copyrighted material on a public forum would be, for want of a better description, dumb-assed.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 21:30:50 +0000

Just sold my Nav u-50 today. The money I got will go towards the new Sony Sat Nav Model NV-U92T. I had a good experience with the Nav 50 and can’t complain too much about it; it never let me down too badly. I quickly installed newer firmware and after that it was fine. It had excellent signal acquisition and hold, even in town and wooded areas. The maps were out of date of course – there’s no such thing as an up-to-date map after all. I didn’t begrudge paying £42 for an update – it must be a mammoth task to keep these maps as current as possible, and the US government spent billions putting the GPS system into the sky, so smile and pay up! It doesn’t take people very long to start taking amazing technologies such as GPS and mobile phones for granted…
I will let you know how the NV-U92T performs soon.

By: Dick

Dick — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:25:12 +0000

[removed by Gary]

By: G.R.

G.R. — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 21:43:51 +0000

Dick,

I would be VERY interested in the firmware and map update.

And how about this: http://www.navu.sony-europe.com/navu/consumer/showProduct.do?reloadProduct=true&productId=1110

Anyone have that? I’ll rather pay anyone other than Sony for a copy…

Contact: gr at milk . no

By: krem

krem — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 16:09:27 +0000

hi
I’ve been grant with a nav-50, friends gifted it to me, almost a year ago for birthday. I think it’s a crap tool.
sometimes it take 30 min to find satellites. same car, same position few days after that works fine.
it lack several roads in france too.
last month datas get self-erased, the nav-50 didn’t tells me the map wheren’t available. the sony support tells me to reinstall the software using my PC’s. my laptop & my desktop were using office 2007 that is not compliant with the soft provided. with no consideration for my garanted, Sony Support didn’t help. I had to find a computer with older office soft to fix my problem.
since, the home adress didn’t register and the calculation option is set on TMC, i didn’t have this option. so i had to change it on every calculation ! otherwise the system didn’t complaint it does as if i didn’t click!!!!!!
The POI that interest me for my professional use are the TOTAL GAS STATIONS, i owned a buissness card to refill at those stations only. The GPS print them on the screen, in 3D mode, only when they are at my side, not before ! that’s totally unuseable.

By: KimB

KimB — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:20:40 +0000

Hi just found this thread. If anyone does have the latest firmware and maps that wouldn’t mind sharing it would VERY helpful. Sony’s website only does to 1.05 which still does not include 7 digit postcode. Ah!

By: johnnyallan

johnnyallan — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:45:06 +0000

is it more up to date than the 8.31 for the NV-50T which was for April 2007, and will it load ontro my satnav

By: Dick

Dick — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 12:32:36 +0000

I have the NAV-U50 and U-50T the latest firmware and european maps updated to June 2007 if anyones interested.

By: johnnyallan

johnnyallan — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 11:03:26 +0000

Hi Kim,
I have just downloaded their £42.00 update and the firmware version is 8.31 and the product verson is 1.50.02. i hope this is of some use to you. You can only install the software once (pity?)

By: Gary

Gary — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:54:09 +0000

Hi Kimi, thanks for that – I didn’t know about the firmware differences.

anybody fancy posting this latest map.

I’m pretty sure that’d be copyright infringement, I’m afraid.

By: Kimi

Kimi — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 14:52:45 +0000

Hi all – the NV-U50 is available with 2 versions of firmware – 1.05 (this is the last free upgrade level with partial postcode – this is what can be downloaded from the sony site for free), and 1.06 – this has full postcode and was only installed in a limited run of units (I think they were supplied to Sainsbury’s).
The maps for the 2 versions are different.

I’m running the 1.06 version and to be honest it works like a dream – never had any problems and if a postcode isn’t recognised you can still enter the address or navigate to it on the map.

Nick mentioned that his takes a while to lock on to a signal – if you turn the unit off on the bottom, it can take a while longer than normal, also if you are driving while it’s trying to lock on it will take longer – it’s recommended to be stationary while trying to get your initial signal lock (I think the longest I’ve ever waited when stationary is around 1 and a half minutes).

Anybody know what the firmware version is after installing the £42 update and anybody fancy posting this latest map. I have also repaired a few of these units – if anyone’s got any problems I may be able to help …..