Newbie post - well at least am happy with TT3!

[LukeH]

About two weels ago I received an invite to attend an F1 testing day at Silverstone as a guest (not a driver!) of Williams. Great day out, but I got completley lost getting to and coming home from the circuit. After taking close to 4 hours to complete a 2 hour journey I decided it was about time to buy some kind of Sat Nav system.

After reading through a good deal of the posts on this and other forums, and the reviews from the excellant GPS World team I started to look around for both PocketPC/GPS bundles but also checked out prices for seperates.

It seemed to me that most bundles with a decent GPS BT and PDA would cost around £500-£700. Not too bad, but thought I could do better. In the end I found a Toshiba e740bt for around £150 from ProcomDirect and about the same for a Tom Tom BT GPS reveiver from eBuyer. So £300 all in (plus £25 for a generic mount).

Once all the packages had arived, I spent about 30-45 mins installing. getting the Tosh to talk to the TomTom and installing maps to my 256mb SD card (already owned). I then downloaded the POI Sync from this website and CheckPOInt as well.

Armed with all of this gear, my first test came with a trip to see the Marsh Tennis clasic at Hurlingham (near Wimbledon). I live in the Forest of dean so about 120 miles, via my office in London on new bond street.

Yes TT3 can hang occasionaly, yes the Toshiba can freeze and needs to be reset for what seems like no reason. But on the go I had no problems at all, I arrived both at the office and Hurlingham on time, stress free and as a bonus, my wife was also a lot less stessed than usuall when taken accross London!

Maybe I have become complacent in the 15 years I have been using Technology, but I have learnt to put up with the odd nigle if the application/hardware does what you want it to when you want it to. This is my experiance of TT3, bluetooth and Toshiba - overall positive.

I have also found the occassional roads/one way systems/changed roads that the TT3 maps were not aware of, but the re-calculate route kicks in very quick and has caused no real hassle.

For £300 I have an excellant sat nav system, and would recommend any new buyers check out the advice on this website as I did, it will help to make you a little more realistic about what you get for your money

[Morris]

Welcome to the wonderful world of GPS navigation.


Its sometimes taken me 4 hours just to get out of Silverstone!!!

Morris

Grzzzzzz

[djohnson]

I use Tom Tom 3 with an Emtac GPSJAQ and an Ipaq H5550. I bought one of those vent clips by the clip company and found this to be perfect for mounting in my car. I initially thought that a vent clip was going to look somewhat stupid covering my air vent. But actually, it works out really well. It doesn't really cause a problem for air flow (keeps your Pocket PC cool :D ) I also love the portability this gives me.

All I can say is that I am well impressed. There have been niggles along the way. But with the help of forums like these, I've been able to keep everything up to date and working pretty well.

To give you an idea of the power of a system like this. My wife and I decided to take a trip to Starbucks in Winchester. From where I live, it's about 30 miles (if you travel the way most people go). First I looked up the Post code on the Internet and entered the destination into Tom Tom. I then told Tom Tom to take the shortest route (21 miles). I knew full well that this would be longer in time, but I also knew that it would be more scenic and less busy, and time wasn't a problem for me.

Off we went to Winchester. Guided perfectly. I don't rely on voice prompts alone. I've found it far more accurate if you keep the rolling map on and use both. Especially when you get to roundabouts.

After a nice coffee and some lunch, my wife said that she needed a post office. This is where Tom Tom comes into it's own. From where I was sitting in the car park, I tapped the screen and selected "Navigate to". I then click POI. I then click Post Office. The nearest post office was 800 yards away. Wondering if this was really going to work out, I let Tom Tom guide me. It took me down a number of side streets to a small row of 3 shops. Hey presto, there was the post office. Never before would I have gotton where I wanted so quickly and effortlessly. Brilliant!!

POI's are brilliant!! (make sure you get POI Warner to keep up to date) The sheer usability of these is amazing. Talk about useful or what.

As far as I'm concerned. Tom Tom 3 exceeds my expectations. And this would probably be true of other NAV systems for PDA's. Gone are the days of buying maps every time I need to get to my destination. And driving in London was always a NO NO before. Not because of the weight of traffic, but because of the fact that once you get on many London roads, you can't just stop anywhere to check out the map. Which can be pretty stressfull.

You've gotta love it

[Deadly_Jowl]

My setup up is an iPaq 4150 with TT3 Bluetooth. It cost me in total around £500 with 256 SD card and speaker mount.

I recently gave it it's first real test - Travelling to Great Yarmouth frmo Sheffield, Sout Yorkshire - a trip of 186 miles.

The results exceeded my expectations. I decided against the first router - down the A17 and went down the A1. TT3 and Checkpoint warned me of ALL the speed cameras on the way and directed me to the door of where we were staying (which was in a caravan - with the CC sites downloaded as a POI)

I used the system extensivley down there travelling to Norwich and other small towns / villages. I've even added a couple of new McDonalds POI's (complete with Bart Simpson warnings!)

THe biggest thing for me was when I accidently let my BT receiver run out of battery - I then has to read street signs to get my destination - I went the wrong way twice!

My Uncle has just spent £1700 on a DVD based in car sat nav plus another hundred or so on a camera detector...I got all this and more for £500.....me thinks I got a good deal.

I'm a VERY happy GPS and TomTom user

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