Their’s been a lot of interest in SatNav lately, so here’s a brief rundown on the TomTomGo I bought a couple of weeks ago.
I find this a superb piece of kit to use. It’s so nice not to be having one eye on the map you’ve got in one hand, the other eye on the route your trying to navigate and the eyes in the back of your head on the lemmings that are trying to out do each other with stupid manouvers. Their are one or two niggles though, so let’s get them out the way first.
A) It doesn’t give you an early enough warning at the major motorway junctions. IE M25 M1. It leaves the directions until your nearly on top of the thing before giving you the voice guidance/map gets to the point you can take a reading off it. Although it does give you 1,000m warning, some of the junctions markings can start at nearly a mile away. I tend to use my truckers atlas for these.
B) You have to use it with a large amount of common sense thrown in 
. Compute the route, then have a look at it. If you think some of the B roads are no good/their’s a bridge in the way, then set it to avoid that part of the route and recalculate - it more often than not then sends you the route you’d have taken in the first place avoiding the obstacle.
C) The maps arn’t quite complete. It treats the M5/A44/M6 roundabout in Birmingham as a bear left when it’s a stonking great roundabout so the mapping software isn’t quite complete, that and I dicovered this morning the CD provided doesn’t work with windows ME. Says it does, so Tom Tom are sending me a new CD as their must be a fault with this one.
Ok, when I bought the thing a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t wait to get out and try it. It says charge the thing for a couple of hours, but me being me, I took it out the box, switched it on, waited for it to acquire sattelite lock (from never having locked on before you have to wait a bit, about 10mins, now it acquires sattelites almost instentaniousley) and set it a real snotter of a street to find down a one way system in the middle of Leicester that I used to deliver to in my multidropping days. Navigated me in flawlessley.
It got a real test when I went to Norwich on Monday. The drop was Tesco’s right in the middle of the town in a paved area with bollards and pedestrians all over the place. I put the postcode in and it worked the route out. I was told the bay’s round the back opposite the curch, so I picked that out on the map and set it as my destination. Arrived at the general area and it directed me to the street you go up to get into said paved area. I though their’s no way it’s going to be up their (looked like an entrance to a nursing home), went round again and it recalculated my route and talked me to the street again, albeit trying to send me up a couple of roads you wouldn’t swing a cat in, never mind take an artic up :rolleyes: but you just set it to avoid them/just drive past and it takes you round and recalculates. You can actually use it just as a rolling map and make your own descisions in situations like these, with the added benifit you know where you are at all times 
. Anyway, I digress. I parked up at the top of the street and walked round to the bay, to be greeted with a “did you find us allright?” And a smirk from Tesco’s staff. Replied “fine thanks” and he looked most noneplussed 
. Had a word with a grinning Tesco’s driver on the bay and asked him how he got up their. "Your on the right route mate - I’t’s a sod. I’ll make sure no one gets in your way when you come up - their’s pedestrians all over the place. Nice of him.
That is where the thing really scores, when you come off the motorway and get into town where it’s a little backstreet, or navigating from one place to the other in town. It’s lovely to have a rolling map and turn by turn directions. Really takes a lot of the grief out of the job. I’m getting most of my drops off in the same time as the regular drivers who know the route like the back of their hands when I’ve never been to them before and am getting re - booked on the strength of this even when their’s a lull, so it’s getting me work . For a luddite like me who doesn’t want to mess about with a PDA system, it’s perfect. Just switch it on and go. Possibly why it’s called Tom Tom Go.
One very happy bunny 
.
But i’m gonna keep pestering… 
