I've just spent a frustrating weekend updating the maps in my Amundsen SatNav. The whole process seems far removed from 'Simply Clever'.

 

The site tells you to check the current map version before downloading the new version to ensure an update is necessary yet doesn't bother to show the version or the release date of the new version.

 

Using the Skoda downloader and unpacker, I downloaded the map 4 times in order to get one that would unpack onto an SD card. Each type there were CRC errors (data problems) in the download.

In the end I unpacked using the Windows 10 unpacker and noted the files with errors. I then found those files in one of my other downloads and copied them onto the SD card.

 

Eventually I managed to get a working version, only to find that the new map still shows the old speed limits in France which were actually changed before the last update.

 

I cannot understand why it is necessary to download the entire map database when only a small part of it has been changed. computer software has been able to do that for the last 40 years.

 

My final gripe is that the Skoda original SD card that I am forced to use only has a capacity of 14GB and the Maps take up over 13GB, so where am I supposed to put points of information, my destinations and all the other things you can supposedly load.

 

'Simply Clever' - I don't think so.

6 minutes ago, Allanw said:

My final gripe is that the Skoda original SD card that I am forced to use only has a capacity of 14GB and the Maps take up over 13GB, so where am I supposed to put points of information, my destinations and all the other things you can supposedly load.

Did you follow the advice on the portal and reformat the SD card to 4096 byte clusters?

 

This reduces the space wasted by the many small files in the maps, and reduces the total amount of space needed e.g. a 1 byte file is allocated the cluster size so if the cluster size was 16K and is now 4K then that's 12K saved, multiply that by many files and the reduction in total size is significant.

I found it easier bypassing the Skoda update portal and doing it manually with advice here and the following link to map data

 

 http://infotainment-cdn.skoda-auto.com/base/maps/STD2_1030_EU1_201819.zip

 

But it's not just Skoda that has these issues. I updated my wife's Volvo satnav the other week. It took about 4 hours for the download onto a 32 GByte minimum size USB stick. When Windows reported errors on the USB stick I corrected them and had then had to do the whole download again.

 

Then you put the USB stick in the car and it takes 90 minutes or thereabouts to install the update. During which the ignition has to be on (or you are driving around) and the infotainment system has limited functionality.