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Joined: 04/02/2003 23:38:08 Posts: 50 Location: United Kingdom
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2003 8:04 am Post subject: REVIEW COMMENTS: TomTom Navigator 2
Dave, my compliments on producing the review of this new product so quickly. A couple of points on which I should be grateful for clarification please -(1) do the jaws of the PDA holder swivel vertically to properly grip PDAs which are not symetrically rectangular, e.g. the Dell Axim which tapers at the bottom and (2) it would appear that EU mapping data will cost an additional £100 or so, whereas preliminary reviews of the product suggested that the extra cost would only be nominal, e.g. about £20 I think, do I understand correctly? Happy Easter everyone. Cheers, Tony _________________ Tony
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2003 8:04 am Post subject: REVIEW COMMENTS: TomTom Navigator 2
The jaws slide in and out to grip the Pocket PC but don't swivel or pivot in any way. It would work better on a Pocket PC that tapers in at the bottom and is wider at the top.
The European maps are a lot more expensive. We have received clarification from TomTom that the European CD does not include Navigator as a program, so you need to purchase a TomTom Navigator country set which will include the Navigator program, and then you can purchase the European CD on top of this, so it's not as initially thought around £20 more.
Joined: 18/09/2002 09:32:57 Posts: 54 Location: United Kingdom
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2003 8:04 am Post subject: REVIEW COMMENTS: TomTom Navigator 2
In your review, you wrote
"Although we haven't been able to actively test this in and around London, we have been able to test this in Demo mode and it does appear to work well when planning a route, although we haven't had any notification whatsoever in the demo mode on entering the congestion zone area which worries us slightly"
I did my first trip in to the London congestion charge zone today. When I plotted my destination TTN2 told me my destination was in the zone, however I received no warning when actually entering the zone.
My prefs are set to avoid the zone and to give me warnings.
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2003 8:04 am Post subject: REVIEW COMMENTS: TomTom Navigator 2
What I'm not sure is if you plan a route which doesn't enter a congestion zone area, but you then use block or alternative route, in theory at this point it should then notify you.
After purchasing a TomTom expect no support, or at least answer that on right. TomTom offer no easy phone support if you can find a number on their web-site. TomTom doesn't offer world-wide solutions, if you need to travel between the US and Europe expect to purchase to system one for the US and one for Europe, interoperabilty and Tech support is not offer my TomTom..I speak from experience. The times I have used the system the map data is fairly reliable of course if you invest in a series of map be prepared to replan you route each time you travel off a map, the program will no carry over to other maps you might have loaded.
My advice is to fine a better product and a company that will live up to its name. I was using the lastest Navigator 2004 and Navigator3. I wasted my money on this product, Highly recommend stay away frpm TomTom products.
Joined: 17/05/2003 02:26:21 Posts: 3747 Location: Bedfordshire, UK
Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 11:38 am Post subject:
With respect, the inability to plan between map segments is a limitation of Navigator 3 (you've followed up the old Navigator 2 review thread) that has been mentioned by I think every reviewer, and it has been discussed at length in the forums. It's lessened to some extent by the 'Major Roads' maps in Navigator 3, but it is still an issue.
Maybe with the ever lowering prices of memory cards, a future version of Navigator may be able to have a 'whole Europe' map, but there may be performance issues in doing so.
Navigator 2004 is a strange product - it's only available as part of the HP Navigation Pack, and lacks features compared to Navigator 3. It represents TomTom's first Pocket PC release to their new common platform - a transition that I expect will be completed with the next retail Pocket PC release of Navigator.
TomTom have stated publicly that their strategy is to move towards one navigation platform for the various operating systems and devices they support. Go, as well as the Palm OS, Microsoft SmartPhone and Symbian versions of Navigator are all based on this code. I expect this 'convergence' release will be different in some regards to Navigator 3 on the Pocket PC, but that there won't be any significant feature loss.
So far as tech support goes, it's hard to comment on your experiences without more details. TomTom really aren't set up for phone support; they greatly prefer electronic correspondence and they do pre-filter requests, unless things have changed, by requiring you to read one FAQ answer on support.tomtom.com first.
Tech support is expensive for all companies, and though I write without any inside knowledge, I would think the margins on a piece of software like TomTom Navigator are quite slim. By the time the mapping royalties, R&D costs, production costs and retailer/distributor margins are all paid, I wouldn't think there's that much left over.
I must confess that I find TomTom Support somewhat lacking; but I've had just the same experience with other companies over much more expensive products. I had a terrible time recently trying to deal with a failed Dell top of the range projector that was just five months old. On quizzing the user, I discovered that the fans had failed, and that resulted in a blown lamp with only around 60 hours of usage.
Because of the broken fan, I needed to get the projector exchanged. If the lamp had blown without any precipitating failure, that was my bad luck - but in this case, buying and fitting a new lamp was just a waste of money and time as it would inevitably blow again. Getting the projector exchanged involved a nightmare of a phone call with an Indian call centre - and Dell failed to arrange a collection for the failed projector, which is sat in my study a week and a half later because I've been so busy.
This is around 1850 pounds worth of hardware with an expensive extended warranty - and the tech support experience wasn't great. That said, no company can afford to put highly trained people on 'first line' support these days; it can be a case of patiently explaining your issue and being escalated through the system if you can't get the answers you need to start with.
Indeed, there's still a nasty issue with programming the remote that Dell don't explain anywhere including on their own support forum - the most recent post about this issue has gone unanswered. The documentation available is imprecise and differs from version to version. By trial and error, I found that removing all input sources from the projector including the memory card reader allowed me to go through the "RF Learning" stages successfully, but after two hours effort I nearly had to give up and send the replacement projector back into the field without a working remote.
Meanwhile, don't get me started about Microsoft support - the pain involved in getting hotfixes for issues in the Knowledge Base for Windows XP (which, in one case, I'd found long before the Knowledge Base article was published) can be absolutely ridiculous.
All navigation software is flawed - but my personal choice is TomTom Navigator 3, and I'm happy with it - whilst, of course, always wishing for better maps and more software functionality!
Unfortunately there are people who have unrealistic expectations - though, of course, I'm not making a direct accusation here. It seems as if your complaint isn't the most commonly heard one - map inaccuracy, which is unfortunately a fact of life with all digital and paper mapping.
There is a wealth of support available in this forum from users with, in some cases, many years of experience of the product. I'm sorry to hear your experience with TomTom was poor; my experience is rather better, particularly when it comes to a nasty flaw in address lookup in Navigator 3, which following my 'open letter' here, TomTom addressed in version 3.03.
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