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Better Living Through Technology: 2010 Taurus Edition
by
Edward Niedermeyer
(IC: employee)
Published: July 30th, 2009
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Edward Niedermeyer
More by Edward Niedermeyer
Published July 30th, 2009 2:06 PM
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This made me laugh so hard, because it reminded me of my experience with those free 411 cell phone services, that I just had to share with my TTAC homies.
Huh. Kinda reminds me of the netbook/navigation software combination that I bought earlier this year, except that I paid about $350 less for my set-up, is portable, and can do as much or as little with the device as my needs dictate. I can't blame Ford for this one. What the lady experienced is typical of many current voice interactive systems. However, I'd be somewhat annoyed with devoting so much attention to a navigation system in a premium sedan while hurtling down an interstate in moderate traffic. Remind me to avoid asking a Sync system directions to, in, or out of Tuskaloosa.
I have no quantitative data about the system accuracy . . . the 97% was a lark, simply repeated from an earlier post. What I know is that my system works nearly all the time. There are some songs that it just will not understand, and rarely it will seem to get stupid and not understand basic commands. This is using only the phone and iPod though, not the nav features. Also my comment on using a Mac in a car was really simply pointing out that a vehicle in motion is a much more difficult environment than a PC on a desktop . . . degrading voice recognition is not surprising. The upgrade required for the nav features needs a GPS sensor in the vehicle, and not all 2010 models have this. The sw upgrade that is available adds in 911 assist and a vehicle health check to report out any fault codes on the vehicle. It also improves voice recognition and phone pairing functionality. Regarding the video . . . I'm not sure that programming your nav system while driving down the road is a great idea anyway. You certainly can't program a text-based system that way.
Sync is a joke.