Satellite Navigation

lohwj

I flew out of Heathrow today, and found that Dixons were selling Tomtom Go 300 for £314 (ie, no VAT) and that's a lot cheaper than anywhere I've seen. (Maplin for 330+).

Might be useful to know if you know anyone flying out of the UK soon. Especially if you are looking at TTM Go 500 or 700, where VAT works out to be quite a lot!

1313

I bought a Navman Pocket PC from PC world, which has turned out to be an excellent piece of kit. It not only gets me from A-B accurately but also has word excel, contacts and other stuff included and syncs with my PC.

I am now sure that I save money because of it. I use it all the time, I used to take a particular route to visit my parents, but I decided to let the Navman guide me. It shaved 17 miles off the journey. I also notice that I spend less time stopped with the engine running reading the map. More fuel saving.

Also the other interesting thing was the price. As I was looking at the selection of NavSats I noticed there was a pricing difference. Not the £'s but the pence! Most items were £any.99 but the odd items were £any.97. On closer investigation I found that if an item ended in £any.97 it was end of line or to be reduced for a quicker sale. Knowing this I then negotiated a 10% discount with the sales person. I still have all the benefits of warranty etc.

steady__eddie

Just a quick tip for Satnav users, when the plastic screen protecter (I forget the technical term for it) starts to wear out, replacements are a bit pricey (7 quid upwards). Maplins do a cleaning and protective kit which includes a brush,cleaning cloth,cleaning fluid, squeegee card, sandpaper stick, foam squabs and 3 PROTECTIVE FILMS all for the princely sum of £1-99. I think that it is intended for mobile phones but I have been using one for ages with no visible sins of wear. The size of each film is 9cm. x 7cm. and you cut them to fit. Maplin catalogue number is AOOBB.

terrymats

I bought a NavMan 530 a few months back from ebay at £300. Works like a charm. Not sure what others have to say....

itgirlinuk

I have a PDA. How do I turn this into a Sat Nav system? Can I buy the extra GPRS receiver and convert it? Does anyone know how much this costs?

And what else do I need?? Please help...

Shawz

itgirlinuk wrote:

I have a PDA. How do I turn this into a Sat Nav system? Can I buy the extra GPRS receiver and convert it? Does anyone know how much this costs?

And what else do I need?? Please help...

It depends on the PDA you've got. It would be best if your PDA has bluetooth on it

If its got bluetooth on it then you can go for a bluetooth receiver. The most popular at the minute is the globalsat. This even works indoors!

http://www.easydevices.co.uk/pp/Receivers/GLOBALSAT_BT338_SIRF_STAR_III_BLUETOOTH_GPS_RECEIVER.html

Basically for a sat nav system on a PDA you normally need


PDA
Sat Nav software such as Tomtom
An SD or CF card (pref 256MB to store the maps)
GPS Receiver
Windscreen or Dashboard Mount
Power Cable for the PDA when used in car.

You can find lots of information here

http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/

They also have an excellent forum where I have learn't loads here
http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums

Hope this helps