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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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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 Its selection of gas stations, rest stops, restaurants etc is hopelessly out of date.

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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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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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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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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.

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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.

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