SatNav

[kwatt]

Kev was telling me yesterday how much he loved his Satnav in the van and, until now, it’s been pretty pricey to buy…

http://www.caraudiodiscount.com/acatalo … ation.html

Not any more! £299 for a unit that gives you the all important postcode search.

I may even order one for one of the lads and see how they get on with it.

K.

[johnmac11]

Re: SatNav

Just noticed a couple of satnav systems in the Makro mail.

1st one is a Garmin Quest all in one unit which acording to the propoganda runs for 20 hours on one charge of the batteries. Small enough to fit into you pocket so looks like a good buy at £299

The second one they have is looks good. It is an Acer PDA with a bluetooth GPS reciever, car holder and a 256mb sd card with pocket pc premium edition all for £279

I dont recognise the software on either of these but I assume they will search for addresses by postcode as they have all the UK maps installed.

BTW these prices are ex vat

John

[andy_art_trigg]

Re: SatNav

Or – for about £100 more, the best on the market is the Tom tom Go. It’s pretty awesome.

http://www.tomtom.com/products/product. … Language=1

To be honest, it’s light years ahead of the Blaupunkt one.

A search on Google quicky finds them at £412 (inc VAT) and free delivery.

The flash demo is good (although the voice is rubbish) you can select various voices and I have a nice relaxing bloke called Tom.) You can also download all the speed, and traffic light camera locations and set it to warn you when 250 yards from one.

[kwatt]

Removable solutions are fine if you need to use them in more than one vehicle and you trust the driver to either remove it or hide it at every stop.

I don’t. They’re employed and they don’t care.

K.

[andy_art_trigg]

Re: SatNav

It’s the only real downside, I can see your point about not trusting others to look after it when it’s so easily removable. I have to remove it every time I leave the vehicle. However, if you are self employed it is a good option and the removing each time is a small price to pay for it’s great service. I reckon it saves me at least half an hour each working day, as well as a lot of stress (as I tend to get lost very easily)

[admin]

Re: SatNav

as Ken says I’m well impressed with mine. It was a factory fit when I bought the van and very expensive at the time. However a year on and it still impresses me with its abilities, like delivering me to the exact number of the street even on a dual carriage way or one way system. I have now learned to trust it when it sends me down country roads that at first glance lead nowhere. Done away with my a-z’s and dangerous driving technique of reading a map, putting a finger up at some motorist whilst steering with me knees. 😳

kevin

[kwatt]

Re: SatNav

Yeah Andy I use GPS occasionally on the laptop and I have used it on handhelds and palms as well and they’re fine in their place. In a working van simply clipping off the facia and walking away is a whole lot easier than faffing about pulling off leads and stashing gear away.

I’m a great believer in a dedicated device for a specific task for most things and this is one such instance, the simplicity of a dedicated device is just brilliant here as I have the Alpine single slot satnav in my car and wouldn’t swap it out except maybe for a better one. But in terms of ease of use, believe me, there’s no contest the dedicated device wins hands down every time.

The argument used to be that they were more expensive, too expensive when compared to Tom Tom and the likes and, to an extent, that was very correct, but at £299 when a decent palmtop with GPS will cost near that to me it’s a no-brainer, buy the radio unit. And then on top of that in that unit you get TMC which will automagically re-route you if there’s a traffic snarl up

The arrival of TomTom Go has changed the map and obviously is forcing the prices down rapidly on dedicated devices. TomTom Go is a brilliant product in its own right but still has not got the advantages of a fixed SN head unit in terms of security and, I suspect, longevity in the field. Fine for occasional light use but not for engineers knocking hell out of.

Also consider that the radio is muted when the voice guidance kicks in so you hear the directions clearly even if the radio is pretty loud.

And if you hadn’t already guessed I cn’t go palmtops, I think they’re next to useless things and almost redundant due to the wave of smartphones that have been appearing of late. A lot of people like them though and that’s fine, I just don’t see the point and I regularly argue that case in an IRC channel full of people that use and love them, even they accept that they have limits. 😉

K.

[andy_art_trigg]

Re: SatNav

kwatt wrote:
Also consider that the radio is muted when the voice guidance kicks in so you hear the directions clearly even if the radio is pretty loud.

K.

Now that would annoy the hell out of me K 🙂 The Tom Tom go has a loud enough volume setting to be audible over the radio but the 3D map is so good you don’t need audible instructions. I have it set just loud enough to hear Tom giving further instructions and I glance accross at the 3D map.

It sounds like in your situation, supplying for engineers it would be better to have something fixed. I didn’t intend to dismiss the product – just show an alternative for anyone considering buying into the GSP (for themselves) with a personal recommendation thrown in 🙂

[kwatt]

Na not at all Andy, Go is a great thing I reckon and I even looked at buying one a short while back, but at the money for that dedicated unit I’d have that every time.

K.

[comcat1]

Re: SatNav

Hi all I bought a tom tom go because of the huge area I cover, All was well untill It encountered York, talk about lost, the thing was useless in there demented one way system, in the end I turned it off and got out the A to Z and found my own way to the site in about 10 mins.

Apart from that I find that a day with satnav is much less stressfull

comcat1

[chezza]

Re: SatNav

i had use of a system for a few weeks recently. for the rural area i was covering it was brilliant, though it did struggle to differentiate between small lanes to things like golf courses etc and public roads 😳
eddie

[kwatt]

Re: SatNav

Yeah Eddie, that’s because the US Military that own the satellites will not allow as precise a measurement as they do for say, oh, a Tomahawk Cruise Missile and I have to say I kinda take their point. It would be dead easy for some nutter to then produce a GPS guided warhead, not exactly a fine plan.

I went the expensive route cheaply a year or so ago and bought myself an Alpine GPS head unit and it is superb but not always totally correct, as has been proved. However it gets you there if you don’t know the area 99/100.

As a friend of mine said of GPS, “It’s great if you haven’t a clue where you’re going but it’s still no substitute for local knowledge.”

K.

[Dave_Conway]

Re: SatNav

kwatt wrote:it is superb but not always totally correct, as has been proved.

Yeah, I was following him 😆

Dave.

[kwatt]

To be fair it got us to the door of whatever the hotel’s name was. Pity the other one was built after the nav disc was produced, but again to be fair, you could easily have the same issue with a paper map.

K.

[Dave_Conway]

Re: SatNav

Yep, I would’ve ended up at the same place with my Readers Digest road map 😉

Joking and p1ss taking aside, SatNav has it’s place, I can see the day when most if not all vehicles will have it fitted as standard.

I wonder how many acccidents are caused by drivers struggling to look at a road map 😕

Dave.

[Author]

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