Sat Nav

flyingscotno1

pompeyrich wrote: »

I have an older Garmin and it is pretty impressive, TTS is a good feature, it stands for text to speech and means the unit says "turn right on London Road", rather than just "turn right". I bought it as "refurbished" it came with the latest maps and a years warranty and was about £100 as opposed to £175 "new".

Most newer sat-navs do the street name- indeed the TomTom range has bluetooth to do text message readout and indeed can do voice activated input.

engineer21

Cheers guys no def know they are not god lol but recently ive discoverd me using my fone for google maps alot and quite fancy a sat nav as a back up if u like, i always have maps in car anyway. just wondered what ppl had and if they liked them.

DaveMacD

Had a TomTom, and I loved it. (So did the local scum who wrecked my passenger door lock to get it). Have a NavMan, and I'm not so impressed with it. Software is a bit flaky, and the whole unit is prone to random hard resets. Also, a lot of satnavs only have roads on them. By that I mean there are no 'pedestrianised' streets on them, so you can't always find the address you need.
Something that allows online updating would be a good investment. Anything that relies on updating via CD is a PITA.

bear1969

buy a cheap binatone carrerra and load it up with tom tom i did very easy to do and works a treat;)

Petree

If you're using your phone for Google maps you probably already have a satnav in your hands (well for a few more quid)

You can buy Telmap for a Blackberry (came free for 2 years with my 8310) and not only have the features of a normal sat nav has loads of benefits being connected to the mobile signal (traffic, live updates (no longer driving down a road which the sat nav doesn't believe is built yet), search for a POI and its bang up to date as it goes online)

iPhone has actual tom tom software (pricey!) or an app called co-pilot which is great and gives you a fully featured satnav for about £30-50 depending if you want traffic, and another £30 for europe IIRC.

I'm sure there are other, perhaps better, systems out there, but I find both cracking, and a fully featured, road speaking, traffic aware, mp3 playing satnav for no more that £50 swung it for me and my old garmin sits in a drawer until I go outside the uk.

Downsides are, on co-pilot you can't pay a small fee to upgrade from UK to Europe, so buy the right one first. Also remember the cost of data fees outside the UK. You will also need to buy a car charger (99p) and a dash board stick on thing (£2).

Crime isn't so much an issue as you generally remember to take your phone with you when you leave!

Petree

Also (as if last post wasn't long enough!) you find the signal much quicker as the phone uses the phone masts to get you pretty accurately where you are (like 999 do) and then the GPS has a good head start - 30 seconds max, and when in an underground car park it can generally still get you on the phone signal when GPS is pointless allowing you to enter your route and get sorted before moving off.

Quinny_2

Here is the place to look:

http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums