Tom Tom Sat Nav................

Hello all,

Tom Tom Sat Nav...............

I know your all intelligent people, because you have a Landy. But my friend who doesn't, has just brought a Tom Tom 6 software for his PDA and was happy with it, until he showed it to me.

It appears he brought a MR Europe version; this covers only the (M)ajor (R)outes in Europe! You'll see a lot of these on ebay, all marked as Tom Tom version 6, but they come in different guises.

UK & I, MR Europe, FULL European, and some of these are only trial versions, normally one month.

FULL European mapping is want you want (that's assuming you want Tom Tom software, in the first place), this covers 99% of the roads in most European Countries, as well as GB. The description will say this, and it will be on a DVD, as the maps are too big. You'll also need to buy a big SD card to load it on to.

Hope this helps someone,
Best regards,
Mark

Best bet really is just to get A Tom Tom 910. May be expensive but it already comes with full european map coverage installed on the integeral 20GB hard drive.

By the time you've paid out for extra bits on cheaper Tom Tom's or other Sat Nav's (extra SD card's and map software) it probably works out about the same.

I found my 910 really easy to use. Take it out of the box turn it on and your away. Easy to contact to PC and/or phone for updates and live traffic reports. Excellent piece of kit.

Hope this is useful

Chalky

Yay, just finished loading tomtom weston europe onto my PDA, think it's nav version 5, but will still be suitable i should think, just in casewe stray from the offical road book/directions!!

(although the ability to sat, find fuel with shortest distance could be useful!!)

What would one expect to pay for tom tom 910 :suspect:

I've seen them for around about £200,

Cheers, mark

BEWARE ALL YOU TECHIES ...


By Andrew Hough LONDON (Reuters) - Tuesday, August 28 02:00 pm



The first official road signs to warn drivers about the dangers of trusting their satellite navigation devices (satnavs) were introduced on Tuesday in a Welsh village.

The signs, introduced by authorities in rural St Hilary, in the Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales, to warn drivers about placing too much faith in the directional gadgets, could be brought in across the country if the trial is successful.

Problems were reported after foreign drivers found it difficult to understand phrases such as "unsuitable for heavy goods vehicles" but could understand pictorial notices, media reported.

The four signs have been introduced around one particular black spot in the village, where the electronic devices direct truck drivers to a shortcut between the main M4 motorway and Cardiff airport.

The road is far too narrow for many to travel down, causing them to get stuck and sparking major traffic problems. More than a dozen large lorries had become stuck in the road in the past six months, according to traffic engineer Mark Simpson who came up with the idea for the signs.

"We have had a series of problems with drivers getting into trouble by trusting their satnavs and we needed to do something about it," Simpson was quoted in newspapers as saying. "They can send drivers on the most direct routes which turn out to be narrow roads completely unsuitable for heavy and long trucks and lorries. Satnav can be a wonderful tool for drivers but it does have its dangers."

If successful, officials plan a national roll-out of the signs to combat what is seen as a growing problem for frustrated motorists, with recent figures showing that more than four million of Britain's 32 million drivers rely on satnavs.

Some have reported that software glitches have sent drivers down one-way streets or up impassable mountain tracks. One ambulance driver with a faulty satnav drove hundreds of miles in the wrong direction while transferring a patient from one hospital in Ilford east of London to another just 8 miles (13 km) away.

A spokesman for the Welsh Assembly regional government said that officials would be "watching closely" the trial's results before deciding whether to expand the programme. He also said that officials from the Department of Transport had been consulted and were also monitoring the experiment.

OK, I can sympathise with the old dears in Wales that have an artic stuck in their drives for a few hours whilst the driver reverses back from whence he came...

What I cant be doing with is people that rely on them... Friggin idiots! If it said jump off a cliff Im sure they'd think twice - then to top it all and to side with the stupid we have to put up signs that say do you really want to drive down here We have a bloke here who'll happily set off to a meeting without a clue as to where he's going... he just follows the arrow... and then complains when it takes him a different route to what he was expecting. If he's expecting to go one way why follow the arrow????

As for the chap in the report who drove 100miles out of his way when the hospital was just 8miles away - what a tosser. He must have known it was wrong but he still followed the arrow in the belief that he was actually stupid and the satnav knew best.

Dont get me wrong. I am not anti these devices, indeed I own several and sell all sorts of them, but they need to be used within the context of which they were designed... A navigational AID, not fly by wire!!!


...and breathe....Rant over!

oooooh that touched a nerve, if u use these devices u sometimes have to use your commom sense as well. im a good old map man myself and if i get lost so what. thats one of the beauties of adventure after all is it not.

priblem is people tend to turn oin the sat nav, and turn off the common sense!

The London Ambulance Service crew who manasged to get lost driving 8 miles, didn't hasve a good excuse when contacting their control from outside birmingham, i would love to have been a fly on the wall at that one.
We routinley turn themn off at work and resort to normal mapping, and that works well for us, although there are stilkl a few who rely on the sat nav!

I lkike mine, wouldn't be without it mostly, but i do ALWAYS take what he says with a pinch of salt (and sometimes tequila and lime, but only i've arrived!)

:arrow:

Dying to know what the satnavs say when we hit the tracks in the Pyrenees.

I'll let you know when we get there!!

Tom Mc wrote:

Dying to know what the satnavs say when we hit the tracks in the Pyrenees.

Thats when you turn off TomTom and turn on the IGN based map software... Then let the little red gps dot in the middle of the screen draw pretty pictures as you drive round and round in circles looking for a way off the mountain!

ooo IGN? sounds good, does that work on a PDA?

I'm looking to add additional software if possible, i have memory map, but for some reason can't make it work on the PDA, and of course only any use in the UK, what do you suggest?

I would always suggest memopy-map. However I only have the UK OS maps for that. I am just playing with OziExplorer and European maps at the moment. The maps look OK, I just need to make sure all is calibrated OK...

If you can get hold of the Top 25, Top50 or even Top100 IGN maps for memory map then thats the best solution but they cost ££s and memory-map themselves where unwilling to sponsor us!!

Tom Mc wrote:

Dying to know what the satnavs say when we hit the tracks in the Pyrenees.

I've dumped the entire Garmin Europe DVD and the campsite coordinates onto my little sat-nav thing - has a lot of tracks on there, so we'll let you know!

My Tom Tom 6 allows lat/long ref points

At least we'll know where the campsite is, thanks to Andybloke.

Failing that, have compass now which way is north?

But we all have Tom's roadmap/book thingy, what else do we need!

CarpeDiem wrote:

But we all have Tom's roadmap/book thingy, what else do we need!

Piles of rocks, apparently.

No, I said avoid sitting on rocks if you have piles.

Actually it'll be interesting to see if my rock indicators will still be there when we go back, or perhaps they are sending everyone else in the wrong direction! Think so, probably, maybe

Hi there, I'm a map man myself, my wife has Tom Tom and I have had blazing rows with it, YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS, BL@@DY MACHINE. I'v spent 25 years man and boy in the saddle of HGVs and we never had bl@@dy sat nav. Oh! don't sound like a grumpy old man? 4x4Bun will be in charge of electronic navigation while apd and myself will be glancing at maps every so often. So what if we get lost every so often, more chance of having an adventure.
Few years ago while we were on holiday in Ireland we were in a small village called Cove just outside Cork, we had been visiting the last place that Titanic had docked. We came out of the village and was looking for the Waterford road when we saw this old boy with his dog on the side of the road. We asked him the way and he said if you take the next turn left and then second right and the next left, then I'll see you back here in 10mins Well we didn't see him, we closed our eyes as we went past
Remember just because you get lost a few times, it does NOT mean you are a bad person.
Best of luck

I was lost in a crazy backwater of a Welsh village once where daft things kept happening - like a tractor driver (still driving) was leaning right down out of the cab of a great big John Deere and was wheeling a push bike down the road. Best of all was the village cafe which had a sign in the window ... CLOSED FOR LUNCH.

Yep, getting lost can be fun.

If you don't get lost, your not trying hard enough!
Or as a friend of mine put it, not lost - Geographically embarassed!


:arrow:

theshortwayround wrote:

If you don't get lost, your not trying hard enough!

You're never lost if you're taking "The Scenic Route".

I do appreciate sat nav units, but won't follow them blindly. Wifey dropped a mug on the display of my motorbike satnav last year, since then I've been regularly taking scenic routes to places (Most recently, a 25 mile trip back to work from a Maplin store 2 miles away!).

Dropping a mug on your bike satnav? Were you stuck in a traffic jam?

Using kettles on a bike isn't a good idea?

I have yet to meet a SatNav that could negotiate Leeds, so hold up little hope for where we are going.

I bought all the maps, an extra atlas of Europe and the Michelin guide to France (Fancy a classy night out).

Besides, what's the point of a navigator...

:@: