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Joined: Feb 27, 2006 Posts: 14892 Location: Keynsham
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:12 am Post subject:
Oh my life, what a bunch of hot air! A few facts for you all to ponder :-
1. My post three weeks ago (second post in this thread) opined that the fuel prices feature is marketing hype.
2. My vehicle fuel tank holds 50 litres and I get well over 500 miles at tourist driving rates, over 400 at business driving rates. Is there anybody else out there with a great deal less?
3. Glancing at a map of the UK, I guess that there isn't a single point in Scotland which is more than 50 miles from a decent centre of habitation which would have a 24 hour petrol (gas) station.
4. Anybody driving round the wilds of Scotland at 2am in the morning (or even 2am in the afternoon) with a fuel situation where 25 miles is critical, is just as bright as the people who follow their satnavs into streams, along railway lines and/or over cliff edges.
5. With a tank holding 50 litres, the price accuracy of 0.1p a litre is totally irrelevant - I can't even get the full 50 litres in, but if I could, I'm risking 5p one way or the other. A 100 litre tankful can affect my wallet by as much as 10p. Wow!
6. A price difference of 5p a litre could save or cost me £2.50, BUT only if I have the choice between two petrol (gas) stations next door to each other. In reality, my choice is limited to what's available (either nearby or more importantly, en route) and price is only secondary.
7. Whether an Esso (Exxon) petrol (gas) station is open is for you to decide, using your skill and judgement OR when you select them, by using your mobile phone!! HINT - if there's no phone number, don't bother with them - if they don't answer the phone, either they are closed or can't be bothered to answer the phone, don't bother with them.
8. If you drive in the UK, you should be bright enough to understand that not every petrol (gas) station is open 24 hours - Motorway services and most supermarkets are, but Joe Bloggs petrol shop in Nether Hopping is unlikely to be. In Italy (mainland, not just islands), almost 100% of them are "open" for credit card sales, but the small village attended garages are not.
If TT are only ringing some garages once a month or so, no wonder its a mess!
Your suggestions make good sense.
I used to work for a financial data collection company for several years so I am all too familiar with the problem of starry eyed marketing men who over promise compared to what we the grunts in the data collection and collation system department actually had the resources to actually deliver.
TomTom strikes me as in every possible way a marketing led company that constantly comes up with new features that are frequently never properly implemented in many cases before the next feature set is then promised (IQ Routes is one of the few seemingly relatively well implemented features unlike say TMC Traffic or HD Traffic).
For instance its kind of hard to understand why Bluetooth calling doesn't come with a Bluetooth linkable to the unit separate microphone you can clip to your sunvisor even if the unit also has a microphone in it as a fallback in case you don't ever recharge the microphone on the sun visor clipped unit. Driving a soft top sports car (but one of the quieter ones at motorway speeds relatively speaking - an MR2 Roadster) I find Bluetooth callling works ok up to about 50mph but at say an indicated 80mph (only actual 76mph so below ACPO prosecution threshold of 79mph for anyone here who is worried on that kind of score) I have to lean towards the unit in the middle of my dashboard and talk very loudly at it.
Also why do fixed GATSO or Truvelo camera warnings (even the ones using the PocketGPSWorld database) also seem to happen for those in the reverse direction of travel to the one I'm going in even if I only ask to be warned of the POI if its en route.
So far as Live services are concerned if I'm paying 80 pounds per annum I also expect to be able to at least find and book the cheapest hotel room for the night using the unit and to be able to collect and send my emails on it. Ideally I probably also expect basic web page capability (even if its limited to a few hours or a few hundreds of MBs use per month) but with heavy restrictions or blocks on anything involving streaming or downloading. Otherwise I might just as well make do with TMC Traffic. Also I should be able to configure the unit to show me all jams below x mph and not just those where the speed is a lot lower than the usual jam at that kind of day if that is what I want to do.
Also the Fastest route business is very badly implemented on the x40 series as if the shortest route has a journey time within say 10% of the fastest route but is 25% or more shorter than the Fastest route then I would have said that by and large most people will want to take the shortest route (what most of them would have done intuitively before stanav came along) but at the moment they are not offered the choice by Tom unless they rerun the calculation for both the shortest route as well as the fastest route. Really TomTom should show you a summary with the time and distance for the fastest route vs the shortest route and then let you the user choose which one makes most sense to you for that journey.
Although I a newbie here (although I am certainly not a newbie to internet forums as a species) I see you are clearly self characterised as the forum's Tired Old Man for a very good reason. From the reasoning you have applied to try to shoot down perfectly legitimate criticism of design failings on high end TomTom units it seems your basic Victor Medrew type reasoning is along the lines of "who needs a satnav anyway" and "what's wrong with my trusty old map". That is not a totally unreasonable point of view to hold as in many ways Satnavs are for geeks who like tech devices (guilty your honour in my case) and for the geographically challenged (not guilty your honour). But if so what are you doing whiling away your free non driving time in this forum?
DennisN wrote:
1. My post three weeks ago (second post in this thread) opined that the fuel prices feature is marketing hype.
But it doesn't need to be that way so why don't TomTom get their act together and use www.petrolprices.com for their UK price data instead.
Quote:
My vehicle fuel tank holds 50 litres and I get well over 500 miles at tourist driving rates, over 400 at business driving rates. Is there anybody else out there with a great deal less?
I have driven 2 seat sports cars for the last 22 years as my only vehicle (never got married so never needed to become a Mondeo man to carry the kids around) and the maximum range has been as little as 200 miles or less on some cars driven enthusiastically or fairly speedily. Since most people don't fill up until the guage is in the last quarter with this kind of short range (otherwise you are filling up all the time) its very easy to find yourself with only 30 miles fuel left and also when that needle is near the to the bottom what may actually turn out to be 50 miles range often looks like it may only be 20 miles.
Quote:
3. Glancing at a map of the UK, I guess that there isn't a single point in Scotland which is more than 50 miles from a decent centre of habitation which would have a 24 hour petrol (gas) station.
You guess wrong my friend. On a real world drive from the north coast of Scotland at Douneray at 9pm in the evening in mid June down a so called A road (not the A9) there were no petrol stations open for the 130 miles or so to Inverness. More incredibly still there were no petrol stations for over 100 miles at 11pm at night on the 100+ miles betweeen Inverness and the Perth area on the A9. This is supposed to be a main arterial road. As I foolishly didn't full up at Inverness I very nearly ran out before hitting the outskirts of Perth. You obviously don't get to the north of Scotland much or for that matter it sounds like you don't drive much at night or in the late evening when so many garages (even quite large ones if Shell and not Esso runs them) close down overnight.
Quote:
4. Anybody driving round the wilds of Scotland at 2am in the morning (or even 2am in the afternoon) with a fuel situation where 25 miles is critical, is just as bright as the people who follow their satnavs into streams, along railway lines and/or over cliff edges.
I really don't care what your self righteous view on this matter might be but the point of a Satnav is to extricate yourself from a navigation dilemma you might formerly have been in. And being low on fuel and not knowing which is the nearest currently open petrol station is a very real world dilemma I have often found myself in. Also members of staff at petrol stations often don't answer the phone (or speak intelligible English if they do) and quite a few of those phone numbers go to national or regional call centres for the company and not to the actual petrol station. And what about TomTom's phantom petrol stations that don't even exist.
OK so you probaly drive some large road hogging diesel rep mobile with a huge range and are mr boringly methodical so always fill up at half tank. Well some of us have smaller ranges and smaller tanks and are not such meticulous careful types as you. So why shouldn't TomTom offer a feature (petrol station opening hours) that it is perfectly within their technological capability to provide. And I would suggest that the nearest station to you in a rural area is usually actually the one with no phone number. Also on the north coast of Scotland stations on some main A roads shut at 6pm on a Sunday and anyone from down south would not be expecting that.
Quote:
5. With a tank holding 50 litres, the price accuracy of 0.1p a litre is totally irrelevant - I can't even get the full 50 litres in, but if I could, I'm risking 5p one way or the other. A 100 litre tankful can affect my wallet by as much as 10p. Wow!
You are using very poor logic here as having no 0.1p pricing means you actually pay up to 0.5p more per litre than you were expecting (assuming TomTom even round up and down correctly and do not just cut off the decimal place entirely making you up to 0.9p per litre out as I believe they currently do) So on a 100 litre tank that makes you pay 90p more than you expected.
Quote:
6. A price difference of 5p a litre could save or cost me £2.50, BUT only if I have the choice between two petrol (gas) stations next door to each other. In reality, my choice is limited to what's available (either nearby or more importantly, en route) and price is only secondary.
If its directly en route and within range then most of us are going to go to the one that is even 30p cheaper per tank. Another severe limitation of the current TomTom fuel price system is that it doesn't properly differentiate fuel stations that involve no diversion from your route from those that involve going a mile or two off a motorway. Most of us will not want to come off the main road but are prepared to stop at the cheapest petrol station with a slip road or entrance directly on the main road. Or I am personally probably prepared to drive up to 0.5 miles off the main road if its a fair but cheaper but not 2.5 miles off it. Again opening hours will come in to the equation as the station off the main road is far more likely to be closed in a rural area late in the evening.
Quote:
7. Whether an Esso (Exxon) petrol (gas) station is open is for you to decide, using your skill and judgement OR when you select them, by using your mobile phone!! HINT - if there's no phone number, don't bother with them - if they don't answer the phone, either they are closed or can't be bothered to answer the phone, don't bother with them.
If I wanted to do all that the hard manual way I would have bought a TomTom One and manually keep its fuel station POIs up to date by attaching the unit to my computer and not bought a Go 940 with a GPRS data link.
Quote:
8. If you drive in the UK, you should be bright enough to understand that not every petrol (gas) station is open 24 hours - Motorway services and most supermarkets are, but Joe Bloggs petrol shop in Nether Hopping is unlikely to be. In Italy (mainland, not just islands), almost 100% of them are "open" for credit card sales, but the small village attended garages are not.
But conditions vary through the country regarding typical closing times of smaller stations or especially stations on less major A roads. That is why an opening hours feature is still highly useful.
If you drive a fuel frugal diesel and only ever drive in non evening hours then fine for you but please don't try and tell the rest of us that we should have to make do with an inadequate feature set from TomTom just because you personally have no need for these facilities yourself.
Joined: Feb 27, 2006 Posts: 14892 Location: Keynsham
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 9:52 pm Post subject:
Capvermell wrote:
I see you are clearly self characterised as the forum's Tired Old Man for a very good reason .......
it seems your basic Victor Medrew type reasoning is along the lines of "who needs a satnav anyway" and "what's wrong with my trusty old map". That is not a totally unreasonable point of view to hold as in many ways Satnavs are for geeks who like tech devices (guilty your honour in my case) and for the geographically challenged (not guilty your honour) ......
please don't try and tell the rest of us that we should have to make do with an inadequate feature set from TomTom just because you personally have no need for these facilities yourself.
Quote edited down from about 1400 words to allow some of our readers to take a breath between fullstops
Gosh, it's a surprise that you're not from the north east and probably don't tow a caravan! My occupation is listed in my profile. Since March 2000 I've driven over 712,000 miles, some of them in the dark (tomorrow I'll be up at 4:55am in the morning even!). Obviously, I bow to your superior knowledge of Scotland. But I HAVE been there - I once drove to Hatton, north of Aberdeen, 540 miles in 9 hours (plus stops to deal with diuretic matters and fuel). I have four satnavs (the latest in a run of more than a dozen), so I can look up the nearest Post Office to draw my pension anywhere in the country. My trusty old mapS are in the shed in this box, where they have now lain for quite a long time.
Capvermell wrote:
say an indicated 80mph (only actual 76mph so below ACPO prosecution threshold of 79mph)
The perceived definition of a Tired Old Man is someone who disapproves of "boy racers" who practise the supposed skill of driving marginally within the ACPO prosecution threshold. Indeed, as "mr boringly methodical" I make a point of trying very hard not to exceed the speed limit - I find it easier to use the indicated rather than actual speed. Pray tell, what might be the indicated speed on your MR2 for say actual 65mph (rather more than the ACPO prosecution threshold of 57mph) in a 50mph zone? About 70mph?
As for "some large road hogging diesel rep mobile with a huge range" you may like to read the following extracts from an owner's review of the MR2
Quote:
it is a very economical little car ...
...overall this car is great, lots of power but not too thirsty. i would say its more of a girls car to a mans but thats just my opinion
The perceived definition of a Tired Old Man is someone who disapproves of "boy racers" who practise the supposed skill of driving marginally within the ACPO prosecution threshold.
Indeed, as "mr boringly methodical" I make a point of trying very hard not to exceed the speed limit - I find it easier to use the indicated rather than actual speed.
The perceived definition of a white van man is normally a driver who is right up your bumper (even though you cannot move over or speed up as someone is also in front of you and on the inside of you) completely ignoring recommended stopping distances in the highway code and normally also completely ignoring the speed limit or ACPO recommended guidelines for prosecution for exceeding the speed limit. You must be the first and last white van man to drive 80,000 miles per annum always conforming religiously within all speed limits
Quote:
Pray tell, what might be the indicated speed on your MR2 for say actual 65mph (rather more than the ACPO prosecution threshold of 57mph) in a 50mph zone? About 70mph?
I dislike with a passion those who practice internet stalkerism and so would be grateful if you could tell me where and precisely how you may have gleaned any information that forms the basis of those particular comments. I think it is particular concerning that a moderator of this forum would try to behave in this fashion.
Quote:
i would say its more of a girls car to a mans but thats just my opinion
So the above comment is just to prove to us that you are still a white van man at heart then I see. I think your lot also used to make precisely the same comments about the Fiat X1/9.
Joined: Jan 04, 2007 Posts: 2789 Location: Hampshire, UK
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 10:30 pm Post subject:
Capvermell wrote:
I dislike with a passion those who practice internet stalkerism and so would be grateful if you could tell me where and precisely how you may have gleaned any information that forms the basis of those particular comments. I think it is particular concerning that a moderator of this forum would try to behave in this fashion.
Sadly, the internet is public domain and if people do not like what Google displays about them, then they should perhaps think about being more careful in order that such information does NOT appear in the first place.
I trust that your accusation of simply using Google as stalking would hold up in a court of law.
Now, perhaps we can return to the subject in question _________________ Andy
PocketGPSWorld.com supports Help for Heroes - Read here
I trust that your accusation of simply using Google as stalking would hold up in a court of law.
My forum name here is Capvermell. There is no other relevant material which your forum moderator could have found with Google to glean the material he has posted about me looking up just Capvermell. He could have only gleaned that material using my real first and last real name that I had to provide to become a member of this website in order to get a paying subscription to your speed camera files. It is the grossest possible abuse of trust by a so called Moderator to Google information about me using my real world identity that was given in confidence to the management of the wesbsite and then cross post it in the forum.
I fail to see why your "tired old man" inflicts his personal prejudices and predilections on forum members who are making perfectly valid contributions as though he alone knows what is best in the world. Just because he is some meticulously and boringly organised van driver who always knows precisely where he is filling up with fuel next does not mean the rest of us should live our life his way or not be able to use our Satnavs to find an open petrol station. And if he is going to use confidential forum information to reveal facts about my real world identity that was given in confidence to the forum then I would suggest he is not actually a fit person to be one of your moderators (what a surprise not that a white van man should find it so hard to exercise impartial and balanced judgement in forum moderation).
Your other fellow moderator previously congratulated the level of informed comments in several of my other opening forum posts so how do we account for your tired old man of forum moderation having taken such great exception to what seemed perfectly reasonable and fair informed comments about TomTom's fuel price data.
Just because your tired old man Dennis has no need of this data himself what right does he have to dictate that no one else using the forum does?
I reiterate that his Googling of me using my real world identity given to the website in confidence to buy and download speedcam data is totally and utterly unacceptable.
He may be the one member of your forum who thinks all current speed limits in the UK are quite reasonable and sensible and that the level of stealth enforcement by the authorities is also fair and reasonable. I would however suggest that only a very small percentage indeed of other members of this forum share almost any of those apparent views held by Dennis.
Joined: Mar 15, 2006 Posts: 3219 Location: Windlesham, Surrey
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:39 pm Post subject:
Capvermell wrote:
But it doesn't need to be that way so why don't TomTom get their act together and use www.petrolprices.com for their UK price data instead.
If they did there would still be complaints about inaccurate prices. I've been on their mailing list for a couple of years, but I always treat their prices with caution since I visited a local independent supermarket because their petrol was shown to be the cheapest in the area, only to find the actual price was 5p a litre more than stated.
When I contacted petrolprices.com to point out the anomaly they told me they get the prices from those charged to certain cards, and it may well be based on only one transaction, particularly in rural areas. This, of course, does not allow for occasions where the only qualifying card is used by someone who got a 5p a litre discount by spending over £50 in the shop. _________________ Anita
TomTom VIA 135 - App 12.075
UK map 1125.12264
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