TomTom in Tenerife

[3053]

Hi,

I shall be going on holiday to Tenerife in a few weeks time and will be hiring a car and using my 720. I would be grateful for any tips if anyone has any experience of using their TomTom in the Canaries.

Is the satellite fix that I normally download weekly for use in the UK going to be of use when I arrive in the Canaries ?. Should I be considering any map updates specific to the Canaries ?.

[Andy_P]

In the old days, the Canaries was a separate map (but included with the Europe map when you bought it), so you had to switch to it specially

but I'm pretty sure it had been integrated into the main map by the time the Go720 was launched. You can check by going to Change Preferences / Switch map and seeing if it is listed separately.

I shouldn't worry too much about the GPSQuickfix, but you will find it can take quite a long time (tens of minutes!) to "find" the satellites the first time you switch on having travelled a few hundred miles from where it remembers it was when you switched it off.
So try to get it out into clear sky to give it a fighting chance, before you're thrown out of an underground carpark in a hire car with it plaintively saying "waiting for a valid GPS signal..."

Once it's got the first signal lock, it should behave as normal after that.

As for whether you should be updating the map, what version of map are you running now?
Find out by tapping the signal strength bars, then tapping the small box with the software version number. The map name and number will be in the list of text on the next page.
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"Settling in nicely" ;-)

[MrT]

My 940 worked fine this summer in Tenerife and even the Live Services worked.
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Drivelux

[matthewj]

Assuming an open air car park, turn the satnav on as soon as you get to the car and before loading. Let it be static to find the first fix. You can then fiddle about and load and get used to the car and adjust your seat etc. Then, before you set off, create a favourite based on your current location. This way you can get back to where you need to return the car easily. Well, I say easily, as when I did this in the USA the car was in the middle of a block of roads, and the "navigate to favourite" said no route was possible. Aargh! So I browsed the map, then used find to locate the favourite, and then tapped on a road near the point, and navigated to that. But without making that initial fix, I'd have had a much harder time.

Have fun!

[3053]

Thanks for your interesting replies. The map version I currently have is 830.2306 on a 4gb sdhc card that only seems to recognise 2gb but it works OK.

The map issue came to mind as I had looked on Google maps and was quite surprised to see the number of what appears to be 'dead end' roads going nowhere in Tenerife. I dont really want to find myself at the end of one of those and have to come all the way back on myself.

If Google are currently showing that sort of map information then I am not expecting my Tom Tom to be giving any better information and in fact as my maps appear to be old then the mapping info will undoubtedly be even less reliable.

[MrT]

Look at the TomTom Route Planner on line and that will show you most if not all the driveable roads in Tenerife.

Many of the roads appear to be dead ends as they are, they go into the mountains and stop as the terrain becomes impassible. You can drive round the island but there is only really one main route (TF21) cutting across it.
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Drivelux

[kp40adman]

I have an older version of Western Europe on my TT910, and it still seems OK. Just a word of advice when navagiting to streets abroad. They sometimes need a 'fuller' road name to find.

We have swapped an RCI timeshare and when I looked to find the address in Santiago del Teide it wouldnt appear. Checked the resort address on their website and found the road name had 'Avenida Atlantico' in front of it. Once I entered this the map found it fine.

Also set your accomodation as 'Home' for your stay ... saves searching everytime for it in recent destinations.

Save some beer for me - I will be there in early November.

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