250W grumbles

[gazznsam]

I've used tomtom on a PDa for the past 2 years, starting with tt3, then got tt5 last year,

wanted the poland and czech republic maps and idealy tt6, but my pda was too old, so decided to get a sat nav devise rather than a new pda, tt software, maps etc, much cheaper getting just the sat nav devise.

was going for the TToneW, but place i went for it recomended the Garmin Nuvi 250W as being almost the same, but with a much better gps antenna (shown in the shop as the TT units had no lock, and the garmin units all had at least one bar of signal and were ready to navigate)
also the nurvi had most of europe on it already, including poland that i wanted, which was an extra download to the TT units (no one seems to sell the TT all of europe units in a shop)

So got the garmin unit,

First thing that annoyed me was the ABC keyboard, what is it with Garmin, are their units aimed at people who've never seen a computer before, now it takes me 3 times as long to enter details because i can touch type on a qwerty keyboard, but am lost on an ABC board.

Is there any fix for this?

The maps look like they were drawn by a 3 year old in playschool, the tomtom maps were very good, like real paper maps, i could safely drive from the ferry in dunkerque in thick fog relying on tomtom's maps to tell me when the roads turned, joined, junctions ahead etc, no way i can do that with the nuvi, most roads are straight lines on it, corners are just straight roads off the straight bit at an angle.
roundabouts are square, lakes are drawn as line drawings and so on,

Are the any other maps available for the nuvi that are more like real maps? i.e. like the ones you get with tomtom.

The map view is almost useless, i drive a motorhome and tour europe a lot, hence i download all the aire, stellplatz and other camper stop poi's, with tomtom, i viewed the 2D map, and could zoom out to show 100km's of map, and i selected to have just the camper stop poi's shown, i'd choose an area i wanted to goto, and zoom in on it, getting exactly where the stop over places are, then click one, and get info on it, and choose to navigate there.

with the nuvi, i have to be zoomed in to about 50meters of map to see poi's, then they are tiny dots, and every single one is listed.

is there a way to edit the software to allow certian poi's to be visable when zoomed out on the map? as that really is the killer for this unit, i just dont tour europe knowing where i'm going... ever, ok i know i'll be in Hamburg in a few weeks time after nipping into Denmark, but that's it, where in Hamburg i'll stay hasnt been decided yet, and wont be untill the day i get there,

after that i'll go where ever looks nice and has a camperstop, i get to see loads of towns i'd never think of going to otherwise like this, but garmin wont let me navigate like this.

The poi's being stuck in a seperate area is a pain, with tomtom you add them to the main poi area, why does garmin make you put them all in one long list in a seperate area,
i've got my poi's in the custom area by country, then by catagory, but that's it, and it took me a while to figure out how to do that, even having to put dots before the catagories i use the most.

Has someone come up with a bit of software that allows you to adjust your garmin from your laptop to suit you and not the makers?? a bit like people make mobile phone editors that allow you to customize almost every function.

The garmin unit is good in it's just the right size to fit an my pocket, so it's always with me when i leave the van, the tomtom was a bit too bulky to fit in a pocket comfortable due to the humped back.

also the antenna on the garmin is awsome, i drive a motorhome that has a large over cab section, so the view of the sky is zero straight up from the windscreen, also i mount the unit on my dashboard which places is a good foot back from the screen, and yet it still gets a full signal, even in the back of the motorhome where i have only a 900 x 600 roof vent and side windows it gets a 3 bar lock.
and the currency converter is handy, if they put a european translator on the extra's then it's be a very versatile euro traveling tool,

Jut need to sort out the niggeling faults that take it way below tomtom's standard to make it the much better deal, as it was only a tenner more than the tomtom1W, and it has much more maps and they are fairly accurate, only the odd roundabout not listed, and it's only shown my route down a one way street the wrong way once, and that was a recently changed road, where as tomtom5 was always trying to get my licence taken off me by directing me to do illegal manouvers.

[swing]

Many of the things can't be adjusted, it's just the way it is, eg the keyboard and the maps.

However, although I agree it's a pain Garmin don't show the POIs at higher zoom levels, compared to a TomTom, I actually prefer the Garmin system. You see (apart from the odd software bug in the software) the Garmin system doesn't have an upper limit on the number of POI files you can have loaded - you can have hundreds of files (thousands of POIs) loaded at the same time - with TomTom you are often limited to a small number of files. By not displaying the POIs, Garmin can have a much larger higher limit, and this allows me to keep lots of different POI files on my unit "just in case".

With TomTom, I found once I'd added the speed cameras, I could only have a handful of POIs, so it didn't matter if they are displayed on the screen or not, I never had the right POI files with me when I needed something.

Also, Garmin has much better handling of speed camera alerts, but I'll save that for another post.

Finally, just to show I'm not too biased towards Garmin, I prefer the control and range of information displayed in the TomTom blue section at the bottom of the screen, and the traffic summary on the main map page is much better than either of the Garmin efforts - a shame about the quality of data though - although given both suffer TMC problems, support for traffic still has a long way to go before it's safe to rely upon it from either company.
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Please don't be offended if I do not reply to a PM - please ask questions via the forums.

[MaFt]

on the nuvi 360 if you are just driving around the pois show on the 3d map - they only disappear when navigating. not wure how the 2xx series handles them though.

MaFt

[philpugh]

Regarding the POIs

It's not obvious with a general perusal of the manal but if you place your POI files into sub-folders of a 'main POI' directory - when you use POILoader it will create subfolders in the nuvi list - using the names of the sub-folders you created. This gives you more manageable POI lists. Just point the POILoader at the 'main POI' directory.
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Phil

[gazznsam]

cheers for the replies, so untill someone comes up with a way to hack the softwars, i'm stuck with wishing i'd gone for the tomtom.

that is another thing i miss from tomtom, the choice to show your not only the ETA, but speed, distance to end and so on on the main screen, and choose what you had visable, speed vas very handy for me, as the motorhome being english has a mph speed with the tiny kph markings inside the main mph ones, much harder to just glance and see the speed i'm doing in kph,

i used to ignore the vans speedo and use the tomtom's speed display, ok i know i could put in a digital bycle speedo, but i cant be bothered with the arelditing the magnet to the wheel rim and hoping it'll stic through years of accumilated brake dust, running the wire into the cab, trying to extend the horrible wire withe string in it, then having to get a light to shine on the bike speedo so i can see it at night.

maybe because i used the pda versions of tomtom, i didnt seem to be limited to the ammount of poi's i could have, at one point i had all the speed and red light camera's, with all the warning points via poi warner so it spoke the speed limit to me, i had the 5000 german stellplatz poi's, 4500 french aire poi's, hundereds of belgian and dutch ones,

supermarkets, bio-diesel stations, dump stations and so on for all of the countries i traveled through, ok they went with each map, but the german map file had about 10'000 poi's, and it never complained, i just had the stellplatz's and bio-diesel poi's shown on the map tho, as they were the ones i wanted to navigate to by looking at the map to see which were in the general direction i felt like traveling in that day.

back to the garmin, another grumble, ok i bought it in the uk, and the default poi's are ok when in england, tho whilst stopped at the big 24 hour tesco just up the A2 from the docks it was telling me the nearest tesco was 20 miles away,

but once abroad the poi's on the unit are almost non existiant, mine has no supermarkets in germany, no atm's outside the very big cities, a few petrol stations,

so i've had to get my own poi's and load them on, not something i thought i'd do for something basic like supermarkets when the maps are for all of europe.

I guess i can work around the poi on the map thing for now by looking for an area i'd like to go, then searching the town name in the poi database, and then viewing the map of the poi, this allows me to zoom out and still see where the poi is, not ideal but better than having to print off paper maps of all the poi locations.

it's just that damn abc keyboard, ok i like how you can change to other language keyboards whilst keeping the instructions etc in english, handy for navigating to streets with non english letters in it, i.e. the accents in french, umlouts in german etc, but it's still an ABC keyboard, and theyre for lickle kids who wont oown a car for another 15 years,

grown ups want a qwerty board... i did kinda hope say the french keyboard would be an azerty one, but nope, still an abc, just with some accented letters,

Surely it wouldent take a genius to hack the keyboard software, or come up with a new downloadable keyboard in the qwerty format, it's just re-mapping the input and changing the displayed letters.

[PowerLee]

As for the keyboard issue, why not email Garmin & suggest the qwerty option, they may get a few people asking for it & inclued it in a future firmware update.
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Garmin I3
V9 maps on a 2GB card & 2.7 firmware

[gazznsam]

well, been using the garmin for a good few months in europe, didnt go into poland after all (put off by meetin g 2 seperate motorhome owners who'd been robed there, and 1 more who almost got ramed off the road to be robbed)

so should have gone for the tomtom after all as i only went for the garmin for the poland maps... live and learn.

i emailed garmin about the keyboard, reply was short and sweet, basicaly 'tough titty pal'

i am really wishing i'd bought the tomtom now more than ever, the maps on the garmin are just so annoying, i'm in the austrian alps right now, and it barely shows a switch back, i know i shouldent rely on the gps to show me the road layout, but on tomtom i could and it was very handy to know that around the next 180 degree bend the road will twist to the left then right very tightly.

the poi thing is really bugging me, i've had to resort to using paper maps with the motorhome stop over places on them to choose where to go, then look them up on the gps, see how far away and so on.

the most annoying thing is the uk voice tho, the woman who they used must have had a missing front tooth, as all her S's are whistled, not a big deal i guess, but it bugs the hell out of me and the GF, and it took me a while to figure out she was saying the word 'ramp' thought it was the word 'roundabout' but with the 'bout' bit missing.

yet another niggle, you can put the usage mode between driving, riding and walking, would it have been so hard to have it change the word used to tell you what to do with that selection?
i.e. in walking mode, your still told to 'drive 20 meters then turn left'

i know theres a voice file hacking tool now, but to be honnest when i get back to england i'm gonna eBay the garmin, and get a tomtom instead, everything that bugs me about the garmin is adjustable or not a problem with the tomtom,
just the antenna issue, and i already have a gps antenna on the foor, just need to change the connector to match the tomtom's large port, as it's got the more standard small antenna plug on it for pda gps units.

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