Looking to purchase sat nav, lots of help please! :)

baggiemad · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 19, 2007 Posts: 4

hi

am new to the world of Sat Nav's, sure i'm not the first (or last) to post this question, but be very grateful for any info/advice recieved, as its vital to my job i get the right Sat Nav!

I will start a new job being a courier next few weeks and as i will be covering anywhere in the country, i need a qualitysat nav to get me round my destinations as quickly and accurately as possible, and dont want to waste money on something that doesnt do what i want it to, as the market is saturated with systems at mo! Will be spending up to 7/8 hours on the road 6 days a week-eek!

Some of the main features i am looking for:-

1/ ACCURACY - how accurate are they to the nearest 10 metres say? vital if i lost in middle of London for instance, some makes more accurate then others i.e Garmin?

2/MULTI ADDRESSES - can i add all my post codes into a unit at start of day and will it sort them out into a logical order so i dont go round in circles!

3/SPEED CAMERA DETECTION - do these spot the digital cameras as well as the good old Gatso's and do you have to subscribe to this feature?

4/ EASE OF USE/UPDATE

5/ TRAFFIC JAM ALERTS

6/ PORTABILITY - As would be moving from van to van regularly, need a good mount, and one that could charge as i drive, and easy to take off mount as making many drops a day, and dont want it getting pinched! Evil or Very Mad

price range , not sure as i'm looking at mid range here, maybe £200-300?? like the look of the Tomtom 520 but that is not out yet?

thanks again for any advice, i'm well confused with all the different ones on here

by the way great friendly forum!

Dave

DennisN · Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 10:39 pm Post subject:

I'm a courier/whitevanman and I have Tom Tom GO (two actually, GO700 and GO710, both going out of availability). I had (still have) a box of paper maps in the van, but since getting my first GO in May 2005, they've been mostly dead weight.

1 Accuracy. Mine are fine. You're bound to get occasional errors with postcodes, but I've had less than half a dozen in over two years. The main errors are maps not up to date enough and you'll never get over that.

2 Multi addresses. TT can't do optimisation for you. If you're into multi drop in a single town, as a regular fixed area route man, paper map is best to start, then memory gets the job done best. Multi drop at different villages, get a cheap enough Atlas to look up the geography, then you can enter an itinerary on Tom Tom.

3 Speed cameras. That information is not done by the device "spotting" or detecting them (there are detectors I believe, but I have no knowledge). What the Tom Tom does (and others) is load up a database of all the known cameras, which the device can "see" on the map as you drive along and warn you of them. Tom Tom provide a built in camera database with new devices, but it's out of date, not very comprehensive and to make any real use of it you have to subscribe to their camera service. By comparison, this (PGPSW) site offers a free database download to registered members who have subscribed to become members (£19 a year, or £2 a month). This Database is widely acknowledged to be the best available and the most flexible - Tom Tom's just gives a warning bleep at some point in advance of the camera, the PGPSW one can be configured to have different warnings according to camera type and speed and at different advance points, they can even have spoken warnings, so instead of bleep you can hear "Warning, Gatso ahead speed limit 50 Miles an hour" or "Warning, this is an average speed limit zone, speed 50 miles an hour". And it's cheaper than TomTom too!! No brainer, really.

4 Ease of use. Well, we're all different abilities. Most folk seem to do OK with Tom Tom - I took mine out of the box and didn't read any manuals and succeeded. I started at the age of 66. I regularly browse through this website forums reading the discussions and pick up a tremendous amount of knowledge from it.

5 Traffic jam alerts. IF ONLY!! The discussions you can find on this site are endless. Tom Tom offer two methods. RDS-TMC, you buy a thingy for a once only fee and it connects to radio traffic information. Perfect, only it hardly works! They also offer a subscription service traffic information system downloaded regularly during your travel, via your bluetooth phone (GPRS - costs phone bills also). It works, providing your phone is compatible (and the number of people whose phones aren't is quite big!) and providing the traffic information gets updated and put out in a timely fashion. Again, complaints are many. In theory, both systems can guide you round a traffic jam. Trouble is (read all about it here) the info either isn't put out, or isn't updated as often as not. Personally, I've declined both and simply tune to BBC Radio 5 Live (MW 693 & 909).

6 Portability. Tom Tom does all you ask for in this question.

There's a viewpoint from a Tom Tom owner. There are many other owners out there who will say their brand is better. I don't believe them, they don't believe me. The best advice I ever had was "Ask everybody who has more than one which one they'd have if they could only have one".
_________________
Dennis

If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!

baggiemad · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 19, 2007 Posts: 4

thanks for your info there Dennis :D , told me a lot, you confirmed what i thought-Tomtom probably the best and most accurate...now when is this is TT520 coming out.......

Border_Collie · Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 12:33 am Post subject:

Or maybe a PDA (Pocket PC) e.g. Mio P350 or the P550 with bluetooth, and iGo software. (I've recently tranferred from TTN5).

Apologies for the 'bold' text answers but in preview it was difficult to follow in normal text.

1/ ACCURACY - how accurate are they to the nearest 10 metres say? vital if i lost in middle of London for instance, some makes more accurate then others i.e Garmin?

The SiRF 3 chipset in later devices hold their lock far better than the older SiRF 2, even when there are tall buildings about.

2/MULTI ADDRESSES - can i add all my post codes into a unit at start of day and will it sort them out into a logical order so i dont go round in circles!

iGo has multi vias and will optimise the route for you. You also get a choice of vehicle type including e.g. lorry

3/SPEED CAMERA DETECTION - do these spot the digital cameras as well as the good old Gatso's and do you have to subscribe to this feature?

There are built in Cameras which will start you off but PGPSW now have an IGO download, the cameras will only warn if you are exceeding the speed limit on approach to a camera and it covers your side of the road.

4/ EASE OF USE/UPDATE

Some have said it takes a few more taps to get around but the routing is fast and makes up for that. Updates are easy, log on and download.

5/ TRAFFIC JAM ALERTS

Haven't checked that but if you come across a holdup you have a choice of Avoid Manoeurvre, Road or xx miles and according to your choice will re-route you around the problem.

6/ PORTABILITY - As would be moving from van to van regularly, need a good mount, and one that could charge as i drive, and easy to take off mount as making many drops a day, and dont want it getting pinched!

The Mio mount is excellent and device can be charged via cig lighter. It easily clips in and out of the holder. The advantage of a Pocket PC is that when synchronised to your Desktop all your contacts will be transferred from Outlook. These in turn will appear in iGo as Contacts. You can set up a POI category as say Customers and enter names and addresses, use those to set your days work then optimise. It easily fits in your pocket and unlike TT, which locks to the nearest road, you can deselect lock to road in iGo and use it off road in pedestrian mode.

You can also save a track log, to see where you have been and it will 'drive' you over the route. It will log miles travelled and your average speed.

You could set your route with MS Autoroute, optimise the stops and save as an Itinerary. By using a free programme named ITNConv you can convert to TT .itn file and transfer to your TT. I'm sure I've seen somewhere in these forums you can do similar using Google Earth.

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