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Owners of F Series - Would you do it again?


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I can't emphasize enough....HELL NO!! This a a sub par beta unit that should have waited a few months before it was released to fix all these problems. Also, the Pioneer customer service is a joke, especially when they say some of the bugs were intentional.

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Yes, namely the infamous green squares. According to the Pioneer rep I spoke with on the phone, they meant to leave them on there all the time. But when I asked him why would you want to leave those on the map when all they do is block information, he couldn't answer me. He just said they were intentionally left on the map.

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That makes absolutly no sense.I would like to hear a rational explaination concerning the green boxes.

Here you go. Explains not only the reason for the boxes, but for the north up only orientation in 2D mode. Both are not the fault of Pioneer, but the iGo software used for the NAV portion of the unit.

 

http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=112471#112471

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Thanks HiFiSi,if this is true wouldn't igo have to set down with Pioneer and show a working example as to how the nav will look and why wouldn't Pioneer question the boxes and tell them to fix it or no contract.Seems to me it would be a simple fix for igo.I know they may be pushing 3D over 2 but don't infringe on the look or use to force you to use the other.

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I would not... I have two sitting on the shelve in the garage... F90BT and I put the Z3 and the D3 back in my cars... I think Pioneer could have had a great item here but failed to really test the unit or $$$ rushed them to production... Sad... Pioneer has taken a really big hit for this. The sad part is most people will be more carefull not to rush out and buy Pioneer on a new release item. I mean come on guys and girls.. if you bought a car and it had problems like this would you be like Oh ok Mr. Car Company I will wait for a update to make it work better... Hell No...

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Yeah I think the pioneer reps fly the seat of their pants, they are probably told to improvise when people ask weird questions, their main purpose is damage control aka, tell people anything to get them quiet and off their backs.

 

I know when the unit first came out they tried to tell me the crackling in the nav voice was a bad install and the wiring harness was bad. That the comma voice was not present in existing units that went to factory and the long boot up time was because of the decompression of nav data loading. That thanks to it being in ram, its a lot slower vs the cd rom. Also, the sluggishness of the screens were, well who knows.

 

So yeah no surprises there the green boxes are a feature and not a bug, the least they could do is say yeah I admit that is an oddity, guess the engineers don't find it as a problem.

 

No admittion that units are messed up, or a fix is coming or anything of that nature. In fact I called them recently to voice the compalints currently, just another voice was my reason for calling I guess. It was the same dude, I am going to assume there is really only a few support guys for the nav units. So hearing me rattle on for 5 mins about all the issues, then to forget my main question, when is the second update comign and is there one in the works? I always feel really awkward calling them up complaining, so Ijust wanted to get off the phone.

 

I am sure they are very used to hearing phone calls like that, and pretty much tune out and let it go in one ear out the other.

 

Overall though i am happy now with the new unit, just work out these last few bugs with navigation, try to make the boot up time at least a little quicker or give us some options for it.

 

By far the MOST infuriating issue right now is the system volume controls with voice and master under the navigation settings, sound settings menu. I swear these things barely respond and when they do half the time they don't even work right. And if you turn down the master volume, the feedback for the voice recognition is gone as well, and in order to get the nav voice to stop bothering you every 30 seconds, that is what you have to do.

 

Anyway, would I do it again? I guess so, but the Kenwood 8120 for a few hundred more certainly does look more appealing everyday I deal with these bugs.

 

Just my two cents.

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That the comma voice was not present in existing units that went to factory and the long boot up time was because of the decompression of nav data loading. That thanks to it being in ram, its a lot slower vs the cd rom. Also, the sluggishness of the screens were, well who knows.

 

I saw that another member took apart his F series and he basicaly explained that it's like a small computer...that being said, and how you brought up the RAM (i dont know what RAM is but i'll assume it has something to do with the processing speed), is it possible to add more RAM? it would seem that the sluggishness merely comes from the unit just being slow overall..

 

im sorry if this has been brought up already (i havent been reading up on the newest hacks since im not computer-savvy), and for posting it here out of topic, but it just crossed my mind when you mentioned it.

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I doubt you could add more RAM. The F series is a computer, but it's more like an embedded device than a traditional computer. Meaning, the RAM is not likely to be on a SODIMM that you can replace with a visit to the computer store.

 

The unit seems to have a fairly good processor, I think it's about 500 or 600MHz. I believe the problems are mostly software related, i.e. what it's doing and the way it does it. It appears for instance, that the device performs a 'cold boot' every time you start your car, and a full shutdown every time you stop your car. Instead of just hibernating or sleeping, which would result in almost instant-on. For comparison, when I close my laptop lid it turns off the screen, spins-down the harddrive, and turns off power to all peripherals. The only thing that keeps power is RAM. This isn't 'hibernation', the ram isn't saved to the hard drive. It's just 'sleep' mode. When I open the lid, the screen comes back on and the peripherals come back on, and it's ready to use in about a second.

 

Why can't the F series do this? It probably could... unless they've configured the hardware such that you can't turn off one bit without turning off everything. In other words, if the screen or the audio amp, or the RF receivers can't be turned off independantly of the RAM and processor...then I guess we're stuck - maybe that is why it does the hard shut down and cold boot... I sure hope this isn't the case, though.

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RE: Boot time

...It appears ...the device performs a 'cold boot' every time you start your car, and a full shutdown every time you stop your car. Instead of just hibernating or sleeping, which would result in almost instant-on.

 

Why can't the F series do this?...

 

Good Idea Stephanie. But IT guys I know often complain about hibernation or sleep modes. I think they think it creates instability over time. This may be a vestige of experience with older puters though. The Dell laptop I've had for the last two years sleeps just fine and is stable. I use it every day. Instead of shutting down, I just close the lid, then come back later and it starts quickly with a new logon.

 

Given the difficulty Pioneer's R&D dudes have had with the unit so far, I doubt such a huge reworking of the OS function is in the cards, but it's a good idea nonetheless.

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Well I agree I would love to see us at least have the option of a sleep or hibernation mode. Anything is better then a full cold boot. However I have a feeling this comes down to your cars battery. They are basically playing it safe, saying oh well I would rather have customers complain about the boot up then complaining our stereo left them stranded somewhere because it drained their battery and they weren't able to start their car. Want to talk about pissed off customers? Oh boy that would not go over well.

 

Their bonehead mistake was havinga unit that is constantly powered on and off, given a full blown windows ce os without thinking the boot up time is going to boarder on being almost intolerable.

 

We are really spoiled with older stereo's being instant on, even the D3's start up is almost instant.

 

Owell, what can you do. Not much I guess either don't buy it or return it if you already bought it. I imagine they are getting a whole lot of flak for it though, alot.

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the ideal setup IMO would be a sleep mode with the ACC hooked upto a killswitch...that way if you only have the car off for the night, or say a week, your battery wouldnt drain, and your unit would start right up.. but if you were to leave it for weeks at a time, the killswitch could be used to turn the unit off completely and prevent the it from draining the battery. it would cold start but at that rate it wont be so intolerable.

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