Nokia Map Loader Sucks

Tonight has been a difficult night working with Nokia software. After all the agony earlier, now I can't get Map Loader to launch.

It kept prompting:

"Connection to the map server has been interrupted. Make sure that your Internet connection is working and retry. If you are still unable to download, try again later."

I don't have a problem with my internet; and was getting a little irritated by the prompt repeatedly asking me to "try again later." Overall, this software is not too intelligent. It refuses to launch unless the phone is attached as "mass storage"; while I understand a phone connection is essential, why can't I proceed with map download in a queue first, then attach the phone before the process begins? It now deemed that I have an internet interruption when I have perfectly fine internet access; although I don't see why it is necessary to even having this prompted, it should just launch especially if I don't have internet access, I would not be able to see any download progress later on. (ie. Firefox and Internet Explore never fail to launch regardless of internet connection). My final complaint is that this program is doing everything is a semi-real time environment; it downloads a region and installs to my microSD card. If midway through you get an internet interruption, all bets are off; you will be asked to start all over again. Why can't this program download the maps to PC first and then proceed to install? It would be a more fail-safe approach.

I am not thrilled about my recent experience with some of Nokia's software design. They make it quite difficult for users to complete tasks. Whats a hardware good for if you lack the solid software experience to support it. I am sorry to have to say this, but Nokia Map Loader user experience sucks!

Update: 10:24PM - For some reason, clicking or launching Map Loader through PC Suite causes this problem ("Internet Interuption"). If I launch the re-installed Map Loader software via Start->Program->Nokia->Nokia Map Loader instead, problem solved.

Update: 5/18/2008 - I realized that sometimes, Nokia would temporarily shut down its application server to perform routine maintainence. Because of the missing connection to their server, I would see the error message as mentioned above. See my latest entry where things start to make sense. Never-the-less, a bad mobile experience for users.