TomTom for Europe and North America

Calomax

My daughter would like a Sat Nav to use on occasional trips to North America, mainly New England, and possibly sometimes in Europe. She has already spent enough on hiring one to have purchased one. I could download the NA or New England map onto an SDHC card and loan her my 720, but was thinking of buying a device for her for Christmas.

Any advice please as to the most cost effective version? She wants no bells and whistles, just to be able to navigate. I'm looking at a TT as I understand them and still think they're the best.

Thanks

Keith
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sgould · Frequent Visitor Joined: Oct 05, 2004 Posts: 1320

You could get both maps onto a 4GB card.

Or you could use a 2GB card for UK/Europe and a similar one for North America.

If you do it this way you can buy a simpler, cheaper device that doesn't have all the bells and whistles of photos, FM transmitters and mp3.

Could be that a refurb model is the way to do it?

I was in a similar position a year ago and I did an upgrade to my old GO700. The GO700 came with a 2.5GB hard drive. Following advice on the forums, I swapped the drive for an 8GB CF card. This takes the Western & Central Europe map and the full N America map. If this is all you need a 4GB card would have done, but I have plans for adding Eastern Europe for a trip later in the year. Details of my "fix" is here in case you find a good, cheap secondhand 700 ... and buy her something else as a present! Smile

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dhn · Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 12:43 pm Post subject:

Perhaps the combination of hardware/software in this link ??
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David

Andy_P · Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 2:09 pm Post subject:

There are good deals on refurb 720/730 models these days, or any older ONE or XL that still has an SD card slot would do, if you want to swap maps easily.

Otherwise any model should be able to fit one map onto it, and you would then have to back that map up onto the PC and replace it with another as required - more fiddly, but do-able.

Calomax · Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 3:43 pm Post subject:

Thanks all, I had thought about the One IQ Routes but I'm not sure she'll want to start swapping maps to & from her PC. Maybe a refurb 720 will be the best bet.
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dhn · Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 4:11 pm Post subject:

My normal map (obviously) is the NA_2gb map which resides on a sdhc card. When my wife needed the 720 for a trip to Europe, I just purchased the WE map and put it on a second card. So, it's just pop out one card, put in another, depending upon the location.

Not really much of a bother.
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David

Calomax · Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:55 am Post subject:

Thanks all for the advice, I've decided to download the NA map onto an SDHC card and loan her my 720 as she only needs it for a couple of weeks per year.

But I recall threads (which I can't find at present) where some people have had problems because HOME has tried to download the new map to both the card and the internal memory then says there isn't enough room, even though they have selected the card not the internal memory.

If I have remembered that correctly, does anyone know how to ensure that it only tries to install on the card. Is it possible for instance to use the card reader on the laptop?

Thanks for any help and apologies if this has been covered. I just couldn't find it on a search.
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mikealder · Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 11:46 am Post subject:

You can purchase/ download the map then use Windows Explorer to extract the files from the download to wherever you want be it a folder on the PC or the memory card, the download will contain two zipped files, the large one contains all the mapping files, the other very small one is the map activation file which you also need to put in the North_Americ map folder.
WRT to the One IQ units, these are far from ideal for swapping map files around to/ from the computer as they are only USB1 so it can take quite some considerable time each occasion you need to swap a map. Longer term look out for a refurb 920 or 930 as with these units you get Western Europe and North America on the same device - Mike

Calomax · Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 11:58 am Post subject:

Thanks very much Mike, I had decided to point her towards the refurbed 930 at TotalPDA in case she wants to buy her own, but she would only use it once a year so I'll offer to lend her my 720 if she purchases the map so I can put it on a card for her.

I presume I'll find the zipped map files in the HOME folders on my PC once I've downloaded it if it decides to try to install it on both the device and the SD card..
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Calomax · Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 7:14 pm Post subject:

Following my last post, I've now found Cyrano's thread including DHN's instructions. Thanks again
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mikealder · Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 7:22 pm Post subject:

At this rate you will soon be running multiple Navcore software depending upon which SD card you have inserted to the unit, keep a full back up of the new North America map folder on your PC and a copy on DVD just in case, this makes it easy to transfer files/ folders as an when required using Windows Explorer - Mike

Calomax · Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 9:56 pm Post subject:

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