|
Goodness gracious - why to Garmin satnav. updates take so long - even on a fast fibre connection: why, oh why, does it take virtually ALL of my decently specced laptop's resources to download and install them. Grrrr
|
Did mine in December while at my daughter's, probably about a 8mbps connection. Took maybe a hour. It was over 3GB. The Garmin Express utility is not at all intuitive. Surprised that they haven't produced anything better than that.
I think most people just buy a new sat nav, but I have lifetime updates for it.
|
To do the rough arithmetic, 8 mbps = 1 MB per sec so approx 3000 sec even if you are getting full capacity from the line, which, of course, you never do.
Would be amazed if you got that volume down in less than an hour.
Whether it needed to be 3 GB is maybe another matter.
None of these numbers takes any processing to to the upgrade into account at all.
I would also guess Garmin (like any other satnav manufacturer) would prefer you to buy a new one rather than keep getting upgrades, it works and they won't make any extra money from making it work better.
|
I agree with your arithmetic commerdriver. Given I have a flaky 1.5mbps line I did the same and didn't even try it at home.
Daughter's connection used to be about 4mbs; she upgraded to BT Infinity last year but it isn't superfast - the 8mbps was her estimate. I didn't actually test it (just checked, I log all my speed tests as I often have to get the profile tweaked by TT).
I won't swear as to the time - I did it while we were having a coffee and a chat after dinner on Christmas Eve , but it didn't take all night. The 3.0GB was the estimate given by the Garmin app. It is about the memory of the device so I stuck a 4GB SD card in, apparently it's very common for the updates to run out of memory.
The folders created by the Garmin app come to about 6.4GB, maybe that's the old and the new image.
I'll try to be more scientific next time :)
|
>> she upgraded to BT Infinity last year but it isn't superfast - the 8mbps was her estimate.
If she's getting 8Mbps from BT's Infinity product, something is wrong. Nobody will be far from the street cabinet for Infinity so you should get a lot better than that. Many people get better than that via the line all the way back to the exchange but with Infinity it's only as far as the cabinet for data - and then a fibre connection to the Exchange and onwards.
Downloading from some websites is throttled by the website. I know TomTom downloads are slow and it sounds like Garmin is too. Microsoft do some throttling as well in my experience.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Mon 24 Feb 14 at 13:14
|
>> >> she upgraded to BT Infinity last year but it isn't superfast - the 8mbps
>> was her estimate.
>>
>> If she's getting 8Mbps from BT's Infinity product, something is wrong.
Sounds that way to me too. It's a newish house, only 500m from the exchange at the Science Park - samknows.com gives the predicted standard ADSL speed as 2.5mbps which also seems low, though I know she had higher than that.
You'd think Cambridge would be at the bleeding edge, somehow. Not so it seems. But better than here in the boondocks. At least we are back to "normal" now - maybe because the cabinet isn't full of water now.
|
|
If this is the BT Infinity product, then you'd normally connect to a street cabinet for data - maybe because she's so close to the Exchange the 'cabinet' in this case is equipment at the Exchange. Either way, if you're that close then 8Mbps is way too low a speed.
|
>> >> she upgraded to BT Infinity last year but it isn't superfast - the 8mbps
>> was her estimate.
>>
>> If she's getting 8Mbps from BT's Infinity product, something is wrong. Nobody will be far
>> from the street cabinet for Infinity so you should get a lot better than that.
>> Many people get better than that via the line all the way back to the
>> exchange but with Infinity it's only as far as the cabinet for data - and
>> then a fibre connection to the Exchange and onwards.
>>
>> Downloading from some websites is throttled by the website. I know TomTom downloads are slow
>> and it sounds like Garmin is too. Microsoft do some throttling as well in my
>> experience.
Most serving websites are rate limited, they have to be. Most are set for the best response/steady average download algorithm. Poor / slow response for new requests (because it busy serving fast downloads) will turn people off, so you need to get them served quicker but with a slower download.
|
|
Just had an e-mail from Volvo to say that they are sending DVD updates for the car's sat-nav. This is a Garmin system. Says it will take up to 5 hours to update and suggests connecting the car to a charger....that is potty.
|
A slow server, supply side, I can understand: capacity and all that jazz.
What I cannot get my head around is that the actual download itself, not the installation, practically stops my laptop from doing anything else, with the HD activity indicator continually on.
This does not happen when, for instance, I am downloading a number of torrent files, so why does it, with an update of less than 4GB?
|
Unpacking a heavily compressed file onto the Garmin as it goes? If you open up task manager I am assuming the process running the update for Garmin is showing 100% CPU utilisation? And also hammering the disk?
You'd think the download would be low on resource utilisation if it's going so slow!
Maybe Garmin (or someone) is uploading all of your download Torrent files ;-)
Last edited by: rtj70 on Mon 24 Feb 14 at 17:39
|
|
I had a dreadful job downloading a new map update 4GB on a copper wire phone line BB connection. Its started and then said 173 hours remaining and dropped out. I left it overnight and it completed but fast it wasn't!
|
Garmin - Manatee
