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#289343 - 23/11/2006 15:35 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: Robotic]
loren
carpal tunnel

Registered: 23/08/2000
Posts: 3826
Loc: SLC, UT, USA
Doh, wish I'd have seen this thread earlier. Kelly got a TomTom One about a month ago for her cross country and out of town stays while she does her Optometry residencies, and so far she loves it. I much prefer the Garmin data, as the TeleAtlas stuff has proven way out of date in many instances.
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#289344 - 24/11/2006 19:24 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: loren]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
An update on how things are going with the Magellan unit:

Its software and UI clearly need a bit of a dot-one upgrade. This feels like late beta or one-dot-zero software. There are some things that don't work well, and it tends to have strange kinds of occasional lockups. Fortunately, those are solved with a poke at its reset switch, and for the most part, the UI is just fine.

Its mapping data is very accurate (in one instance, more accurate than an expensive printed map book I had in the car in the case of one obscure side street), but its choices about where to route me I disagree with sometimes. Not because it's wrong, but because I know more about the streets than it does. For example, at one point it routed me directly straight across a busy multilane highway. Which is a legal thing to do at that spot on that highway, but it doesn't know that the intersection it chose to do it at doesn't have any stop signs or signals to stop the highway traffic and give me the faintest chance of making it straight across. If it had only routed me one block further north first, I would have had a proper signal intersection at which to make it across the highway.

It does do a good job of rerouting me when I go off the beaten track. I've avoided a number of serious traffic jams with it. Which was the primary purpose for me buying it, and it does it well. It is, however, still up to me to remember which of the main sidestreets get badly jammed at rush hour and avoid those.

One thing I'd like to see changed in its next dot-upgrade: Avoiding multiple streets. Let's say I've already told it to route me sans-freeways to avoid traffic jams. Okay, great. Now it puts me on a sidestreet that's also jammed. I punch in "avoid this street" and it does so. But then let's say the street it routes me down is ALSO jammed. If I punch in "avoid THAT street", it re-routes me down the first street. (even though I know for a fact there's a third option it's not giving me.) In other words, it can only remember how to avoid ONE street, and as soon as I try to punch in a second street to avoid, it forgets I'd told it to avoid the first one.

On the good side, I really like how it knows all the Chevron stations and Wendy's restaurants on my main routes. And the indications of when it's approaching the next turn are dead-accurate and give me exactly as much information as I need to be able to make the turns comfortably without missing them.
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Tony Fabris

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#289345 - 25/11/2006 16:07 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
Ladmo
addict

Registered: 04/09/2004
Posts: 524
Loc: Oklahoma
Are y'all talking about the Garmin c320? Is it the same one at walmart.com? If so, the price is quite a bit less, and our local Walmart has it for abot 10.00 usd less than the on line price? I was just wondering if it is a different unit to be so much cheaper.
Thanks.
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#289346 - 25/11/2006 17:41 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: Ladmo]
Robotic
pooh-bah

Registered: 06/04/2005
Posts: 2026
Loc: Seattle transplant
Hmm- interesting.
As you said, walmart.com has the price of $268.82, while Amazon.com's price has come up to $299.99.
When I bought mine from Amazon it was $268, then that same day the price jumped to $275.
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#289347 - 28/11/2006 19:27 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: Robotic]
robricc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/10/2000
Posts: 4931
Loc: New Jersey, USA
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80GB 16MB MK2 090000736

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#289348 - 29/11/2006 01:37 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: tfabris]
Daria
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
Quote:

On the good side, I really like how it knows all the Chevron stations and Wendy's restaurants on my main routes. And the indications of when it's approaching the next turn are dead-accurate and give me exactly as much information as I need to be able to make the turns comfortably without missing them.

I bet this would piss me off, I prefer Sheetz or Wawa, and "regionally interesting" restaurants. As it happens I do want something similar to this, but it would need to know more.

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#289349 - 29/11/2006 06:04 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: tfabris]
andy
carpal tunnel

Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5914
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
Quote:

One thing I'd like to see changed in its next dot-upgrade: Avoiding multiple streets. Let's say I've already told it to route me sans-freeways to avoid traffic jams. Okay, great. Now it puts me on a sidestreet that's also jammed. I punch in "avoid this street" and it does so. But then let's say the street it routes me down is ALSO jammed. If I punch in "avoid THAT street", it re-routes me down the first street. (even though I know for a fact there's a third option it's not giving me.) In other words, it can only remember how to avoid ONE street, and as soon as I try to punch in a second street to avoid, it forgets I'd told it to avoid the first one.



Which is exactly the sort of feature that TomTom has had for forever, if only it had the right map data for you

You can even tell TomTom to avoid cities and towns or permanently exclude it from a give areas.

P.S. one area of map data that TomTom is lousy for even in the UK is points of interest data. Its selection of gas stations, rest stops, restaurants etc is hopelessly out of date.
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#289350 - 29/11/2006 13:47 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: Daria]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
My cheap-ass Garmin StreetPilot i2 has virtually every restaurant in its data set. It's occasionally inaccurate for various reasons, but it works damn well. I imagine that anything superior to it (which is to say, virtually everything) will at least have that feature, though I could be wrong.
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#289351 - 03/12/2006 16:15 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: Daria]
Happy Birthday larry818
old hand

Registered: 01/10/2002
Posts: 1033
Loc: Fullerton, Calif.
Quote:
Quote:

On the good side, I really like how it knows all the Chevron stations and Wendy's restaurants on my main routes. And the indications of when it's approaching the next turn are dead-accurate and give me exactly as much information as I need to be able to make the turns comfortably without missing them.

I bet this would piss me off, I prefer Sheetz or Wawa, and "regionally interesting" restaurants. As it happens I do want something similar to this, but it would need to know more.


I thought that this was a lousy feature too, until I was using a Nissan gps in Taiwan. It showed me every 7-11 and other big chain store on the map because, as it turns out, they are way easier to spot than street names, and you can see them further out.

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#289352 - 04/12/2006 17:15 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: larry818]
Robotic
pooh-bah

Registered: 06/04/2005
Posts: 2026
Loc: Seattle transplant
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:

On the good side, I really like how it knows all the Chevron stations and Wendy's restaurants on my main routes. And the indications of when it's approaching the next turn are dead-accurate and give me exactly as much information as I need to be able to make the turns comfortably without missing them.

I bet this would piss me off, I prefer Sheetz or Wawa, and "regionally interesting" restaurants. As it happens I do want something similar to this, but it would need to know more.


I thought that this was a lousy feature too, until I was using a Nissan gps in Taiwan. It showed me every 7-11 and other big chain store on the map because, as it turns out, they are way easier to spot than street names, and you can see them further out.


So- let me get this straight...
The locations of these shops are shown? always?
I think it's pretty normal that a navigator has a database of the locations- so that they're 'known', but in the case of my Garmin it won't show you anything but your destination or 'favorites'.
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#289353 - 04/12/2006 20:12 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: Robotic]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
On my unit, the points of interest are shown as little icons on the map as I drive by. (A gas pump for gas stations, knife and fork for restaurants, etc.) It's configurable as to which ones get shown on the realtime map, so you can choose the amount of clutter. If I touch one of the icons, it brings up name and the details of that point of interest.

I can also search for points of interest by category (gas stations, restaurants), or I can have it list all points of interest nearby. I can also have it list all points of interest at upcoming freeway offramps.

I'm assuming most of these GPS units handle all of that in a similar way.
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Tony Fabris

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#289354 - 05/12/2006 01:50 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: Robotic]
Happy Birthday larry818
old hand

Registered: 01/10/2002
Posts: 1033
Loc: Fullerton, Calif.
Quote:
So- let me get this straight...
The locations of these shops are shown? always?
I think it's pretty normal that a navigator has a database of the locations- so that they're 'known', but in the case of my Garmin it won't show you anything but your destination or 'favorites'.


Well, I suppose you could turn it off, but not with my limited chinese. It's on by default and very useful in Taiwan.

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#289355 - 16/12/2006 00:40 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: CrackersMcCheese]
gbeer
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
But why did they have to give it such a lame name. Surely it wasn't so they could use those even lamer commercials.
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#289356 - 16/12/2006 10:55 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: gbeer]
Schido
enthusiast

Registered: 29/03/2005
Posts: 364
Loc: Probably lost somewhere in Wal...
Stupid marketing blurb:

Quote:

Why "TomTom"?
Some experts say that language may have begun with drumming, and simple drums like the double-headed Native American tom-tom and the talking drums of Africa, have always been used for signaling, imitating the pitch patterns of language and transmitting messages over many miles. Just like us. And like TomTom products, the tom-tom is simple but versatile, reliable and fun to use.


http://www.tomtom.com/about/about.php?ID=1&Language=1
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#289357 - 09/01/2007 14:55 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: FireFox31]
BAKup
addict

Registered: 11/11/2001
Posts: 552
Loc: Houston, TX
Quote:
To chime in as an American Tom Tom user, I love the Tom Tom Navigator 5 I've used interfaced with a Palm Treo 650. The very useful phone is the screen, speaker, and storage for the tiny bluetooth GPS. Could use it walking around a city as much as avoiding traffic on a 12 lane highway.




Bringing up an old thread, I was looking at getting TT Navigator 6 for my phone, and was wondering if you still was happy with your setup.
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--Ben
78GB MkIIa, Dead tuner.

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#289358 - 02/03/2007 16:46 Re: Stop me before I buy this [Re: robricc]
Robotic
pooh-bah

Registered: 06/04/2005
Posts: 2026
Loc: Seattle transplant
Quote:
Now $248 on Walmart.com

Just noticed the Garmin C320 for $199.99 at Fry's this weekend.
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