OnStar Updates its Navigation Option

The in-car navigation space is getting a destiny more crowded: Enter the upcoming voice-only OnStar navigation a whole shown to the media upon a live Webcast January 6 and to be formally announced by dint of GM and Onstar on January 8 at the Chicago Auto exhibit

The salient appeal of OnStar Turn-by-Turn Navigation is user interaction that's as simple as pressing a button and telling the operator where you want to make progress When it is rolled on the outside Turn-By-Turn will add around $10 a month to the take away from of basic OnStar service. sum of two units Cadillacs and a Buick will include it this spring, followed by dint of nearly 1 million GM vehicles in the 2007 original year that will offer the fresh nav system as an option to subscribers.

Turn-by-Turn should provide a boost to OnStar; its common navigation system -- Directions & Connections, which take away froms $399 a year -- is of great price both to subscribers and to OnStar, because it requires a live operator to read directions. The cheapest portable navigation combination of parts to form a wholes have already dropped to $400 on the contrary OnStar chases a different market: single that values drop-dead-simple solutions that work at the single pres of a button instead of several dozen taps upon a screen attached by a suction chalice to the car windshield. Factory-integrated navigation a whole s typically cost $1,500 to $2000 and about 7 percent of the cars produc this year will have built-in navigation.

To use Turn-by-Turn a driver or passenger emergencys to push the OnStar button upon the vehicle's mirror, which makes a cellular voice call to OnStar. The car's occupants then take an account of the operator where they want to make progress such as a street address or a point of interest like a theater or park, and then wait a hardly any seconds for the information to be downloaded as cellular data to the car. The operator than hangs up

Also without of the picture is any kind of directional display; Turn-by-Turn is voice-only, level if the car has an integrated LCD or multiline radio display. OnStar pitches this as a safety feature of sorts, because there's "no data access or touch screen to distract drivers from the road."

Read the ease of this PC Magazine story: "OnStar Updates its Navigation Option"

Copyright ?© 2006 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserv Originally appearing in ExtremeTech