so presumably the only benefit is that the maps are upgraded and newer roads will be on it ?

do you get a VW logo when you turn the columbus on or is this driven by the firmware and stays as a skoda logo ?

did you pay for it from a VW dealer or did you "acquire" it ?

Newer maps and more coverage for certain countries is about the sum of it.

It still retains the Skoda logo, as it's a generic disk that works across all the brands (VW, Seat, Skoda).

Right now, you can't buy it from Skoda, but you can get it from VW. If you want to 'acquire' it, then I'm told a certain jolly roger themed website might be able to assist you.

To be honest, I'm not sure that the disk is worth the money. The maps on it date from November 2007, yep 2007. They are still newer than what was on the v3 disk, but it's a poor show when you consider how up to date the TomTom maps are. I think the OEMs of this world save money by using older maps, so the licensing fees aren't so high. Pioneer were exactly the same. It's different for TomTom, as they own the map provider (TeleAtlas).

Bagpuss.

Question - When you choose a POI and the address and phone number is displayed on the screen, is it possible to ring the number displayed on the screen directly rather than having to take down the number and switching over to the phone menu. I use this feature on the tom tom and find it very handy.

Bagpuss.

A friend of mine has a v4 dvd. Can I run this from the DVD to see what its like or do I have to install it on the HD. I would like to run from the DVD for a while first before changing anything.

Is there anything that doesnt work with V4 and columbus.

Is it the same process to update the POIs as v3.

Is the issue I note above still in v4 where by when I open a POI showing addresss and tel no is there a way to ring that number from the screen without writing it down and dialing manually.

One last thing. if I update the HD map with V4 and dont like it, is it easy to roll back to v3.

Put the DVD in the drive and you have the choice to run from the DVD or copy to HD.

For POIs on V4 you will need the latest version of POI inspector, currently 3.2. The download can be found on VWnavi.com - Powered by vBulletin.

Rollback is easy, just put the V3 disk back in but I cant see why you will need to. The V4 has a lot of roads that are missing on V3.

Right now, I wouldn't recommend moving to the v4 map DVD if you want to have your own POIs.

There is an ongoing discussion on vwnavi.com about this, and there is still no reliable way to add POIs to the v4 disk and retain TMC functionality. The author of POI Inspector is unable to discover why TMC works for some people, and doesn't for others (himself included).

This is only applicable if you've added POIs yourself. TMC works perfectly fine on the standard, unmodified v4 DVD.

Another issue appears to be that once you've copied the broken maps to the HDD, then you are unable to either upgrade or downgrade them. Apparently, when you insert a different map DVD, you don't get prompted to either run it from the DVD drive or copy it to the HDD. You are stuck with whatever maps are currently on the HDD. For those folks without Superb 2's, you can fix this by applying the v1100 firmware update. This blanks both the music and map partitions, thereby allowing you to reload standard maps. This won't work for the Superb 2, as the v1100 firmware isn't compatible.

I was hoping that the v3.2 update to POI Inspector would fix this, but it hasn't.

There is an alternative, though. I'm now running BMW Pro 2009-1 maps in my Columbus, with custom POIs, and everything works just fine. The BMW maps are also 6 months newer than the VW ones. You also get Eastern Europe included in the same DVD, so no more disk swapping. It does require a dual layer DVD, though. The only downside is that the topographic view doesn't work any more, as the BMW disks don't contain this data.

Once I've tested the disk more thoroughly, I'll post up the method for replacing the VW maps data with the BMW files. You need to have a v4 VW disk and the 2009-1 BMW disk, and about 15GB of disk space to do the job, but otherwise it's pretty straightforward.

Bagpuss.

Bagpuss, Isaw the v4 map recently on a freinds passat and I think they are even older than 2007. There is a new estate near me that has 2 connector roads to major roads. On my 2006 navteq map one road is there with most of the layout of the estate. on 2008 tele atlas map there is more detail but on the v4 map there was no estate and no road. What does be on the new versions or upgrade disks if the maps are not uptodate or a least 6 months from the latest navteq maps to allow time for VAG to personalise them.

The whole map update thing is a lottery, I've found. For me, v4 is a step forward as a number of roads that are missing on v3 (that I care about) are now present in v4. On the flip side, the place where I work used to have all it's internal roads mapped on v3, and they are now missing in v4. They are present in the BMW disk, though.

The only maps that are really up to date are those from TomTom. Not only do they always have the latest data that TeleAtlas can provide (as they own them), but you have the mapshare stuff which provides further updates from members of the TomTom community. If I was buying a standalone satnav, this is the reason I would only consider TomTom. Nobody else even gets close as far as the map data is concerned.

If you go for a built-in satnav solution like the Columbus, then you've got to understand that it will never be as flexible as TomTom. VW, and the like make cars. Satnav is incidental, as far as they are concerned. They've got to offer something, as a certain proportion of consumers want it, but it's only a very small percentage of the total cars sold.

Personally, I find the complete integration that the Columbus offers outweighs the downsides on the mapping and postcode front. If it wasn't standard on the Elegance, I certainly wouldn't have ordered it as an option, though.

Bagpuss.

I have successfully integrated the BMW Pro 2009.1 maps onto my V4 nav disk, and now have the navteq maps as of Q2 2008 instead of Q4 2007. I cant really say how its done as someone helped me to complete the integration by email. As a result, my columbus now has western and eastern european maps loaded on at the same time. The maps, although the same size as the VW ones are compressed, and are decompressed when loaded onto the Columbus HD and the whole load time took about twice as long as the V4 load.

The Q2 2008 bmw map includes quiet a lot of bits missing from the V4 maps including the new junction layout at the A2/M25 junction in Kent. Postcode search is still limited as before, indeed its the same on the BMW Pro nav disk.

i bought and AA road atlas the other day for £1.99. its got all the latest roads on it and i put it in the boot of the superb for the odd occasion the columbus cant find a road and I cant read a road sign and work out whats going on. Sat nav is the worst thing ever invented for removing common sense and map reading skills !!

my tom tom just got me from Geneva airport to 50yds from the door of my ski chalet. not sure how well the columbus woudl have done but as i was in a hire car the £99 tom tom was my only option

I think I've cracked it now.

I've got a nav DVD that contains the BMW 2009-1 maps, UK and Europe speed cameras, and most of the other PocketGPS World POIs.

Everything appears to work just fine, including TMC.

This is what I did:

1) Merge the BMW maps into the v4 DVD. Instructions on how to do this are attached to this post.

2) Add the POIs using POI Inspector 3.3. It's import to add the line 'IDfrom=9000' to the rns510poi.ini file.

3) Merge the localsave directory from POI Inspector with the directory structure you created in step 1.

4) Burn the disk using Nero, as described in the BMW document (attached).

Right now, it seems that the ISO creation process in POI Inspector is what is causing the problems, as it's been proven that you can also use UltraISO to merge the POIs and TMC still works.

If anyone wants more info, just let me know.

Bagpuss.

it is more easy to "update" your poi´s than it is discribed in the 2nd post, because you dont have to make an iso image.

simply put the original dvd into your computer, open the dvd, create a "new folder" on the desktop and copy all files into it. then replace the "cdrom.toc" with the one you downloaded and add all files from the folder "tpd" into the folder "tpd" which you have copied from your dvd.

after that you can start burning all the files in your "new folder" with these settings (i copy this in german into here, because my english isnt that good to translate all, but i think it should be easy to guess what is meant there. probably someone could translate this for the others?!):

Es geht als ISO und als UDF/ISO.

(X angekreuzt, O frei)

1. "Multisession"

X Kein Multisession

2. "ISO"

> Datei System: Nur ISO 9660

> Dateinamenlänge: Max. von 31 Zeichen(Level 2)

> Zeichensatz: ISO 9660

X Pfadtiefe von mehr als 8 Verzeichnisse erlauben

X Mehr als 255 Zeichen im Pfadname erlauben

O ISO ";1" Dateiversions-Erweiterung nicht schreiben

3. "UDF"

> Manuelle Einstellungen (nur für fortgeschrittene Benutzer)

> UDF Partitions-Typ: Physikalische Partition

> Dateisystemversion: UDF 1.02

4. "Titel"

X Manuell

> ISO 9660: CD_6318

> UDF: CD_6318

5. "Datum"

X Datum und Uhrzeit der Originaldatei verwenden

Alles andere deaktiviert.

6. "Diverse"

X Dateien von Disk und Netzwerk cachen

X Cachen von Dateien kleiner als 64 KB

7. "Brennen"

X Brennen

X Disk finalisieren - kein weiteres schreiben möglich

Schreibgeschwindigkeit: so niedrig wie möglich!