TomTom Navigator 5 Bluetooth Wireless GPS System for Pocket PC, Palm, and Other PDAs
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I've been really trying to like this package, using it now for close to five months. In that time I've logged well north of 8,000 road miles. I'm running it on a T-Mobile MDA with a BT338 Bluetooth GPS. Installation originally was...
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I've been really trying to like this package, using it now for close to five months. In that time I've logged well north of 8,000 road miles. I'm running it on a T-Mobile MDA with a BT338 Bluetooth GPS. Installation originally was a royal PITA - the installer on the first CD did not work at all. I finally managed to work around this using their "patch" on their web page, and got both the application and maps (along with a voice) loaded on my SD card. Pairing the BT GPS was not obvious either in terms of setup, but once I had that figured out, it worked. The good: 1. It routes nicely most of the time and the instructions work. It'd be nice to have the program actually use voice generation if its available (e.g. Microsoft Voice Command is loaded) so that it speaks the actual names of streets and such, but I can live with "Turn left" - most of the time. Where does it screw you? When you come to a complex intersection and there's more than one "left!" Now you have to look at the screen - not too cool when you're driving. 2. The "touch anywhere to get the manu" is good. 3. MOST of the time, you can hit the END key on the phone and get the main top screen back, while leaving the application running. This is useful - when it works. Inexplicably, sometimes TT has "Taken over" and there's no way out except to quit the application. I've been unable to figure out WHAT makes it do that..... 4. IF a call comes in, TT mutes and you can take it, but it remains running. I like this - a lot. It then unmutes when your call is over, and back you go. 5. You can operate it without using the stylus, touching the screen, just like it should be. Excellent. Ok, so what's not to like? Unfortunately, the maps. The maps in this product are SEVERELY out of date. For instance, there's a section of US-31 in South Alabama that I travel from time to time. TT insists that IT IS NOT THERE AT ALL. This is not a new road - it hasn't been changed in the 5 years I've lived in this area. The application simply freaks out and tries to route you down all sorts of little streets in this area, which is not cool. If you were coming into this area without knowing this, you'd get SEVERELY lost listening to the device - when the right thing to do is just keep driving... Likewise, there are multiple pieces of roads in SC, north of Dothan AL and elsewhere that I also know haven't been added in the last couple of years, yet they too are simply "not there" or are WAY off. And these are not small secondary streets either - we're talking MAJOR throughways. There are also significant errors in some parts of the US that haven't been updated in TWENTY YEARS. For instance, Northern Michigan near Traverse City. I attempted (foolishly) to run a route to a hotel there that's been there since I was attending school up there in 1981 - TT insisted that the destination address was more than TWENTY MILES from where I knew it was. The bad news is that this corrupted its idea of "best route" into the general area; good thing I knew better than to follow it or I would have been HOPELESSLY lost. Again - this is not a "new" address - its a hotel I stayed at in 1980! Good thing I knew where I was going..... Essentially anything built in the last 5 years is asking for TT to claim that the address itself does not exist and default to a "range". That's ok in urban areas and will usually get you reasonably close. In rural areas the "range" might be 5 - or more - miles away. A horse ranch in Seiverville TN that I tried to route to - established in the 1980s - was one of these; TT had absolutely no clue where it was in terms of address and tried to take me down what was DEFINITELY the wrong road, but when driving there magically the streets were all on the map! Huh? As for the POC database, that's at least as bad, if one looks at completeness. How about this? Select SouthEast, then try to route a route to the POC called "Walt Disney World" under "Amusement Parks." Do 'ya think TT ought to know how to get THERE? Does it get any bigger than that? Guess what - it doesn't have it in the list! Nor does it have MGM Studios listed. But "Walt Disney Animal Kingdom" is, and so is Epcot. Tell me how that makes sense - please? Local stuff is even worse - of the larger restaurants around here that I know have been here since at least 2001 (when I moved here) at least half are missing. How does TT decide what to include and what not? Who knows. There appears to be NO way to get updates to the maps. At all. TomTom's web site is completely silent about updates to software or map databases, and their "online" service offers city-by-city add-on maps, but are they more current? No way to know - and I'm not about to buy one-at-a-time to find out either - never mind the expense. How about accurate maps in the first place? Other complaints: The software doesn't know how to read contacts off the PDA/phone. This is such a simple thing that you'd think they'd have it in there - but its not. Dumb. There's no good way to route ON a certain street. You can set ONE (and only one) "waypoint", but you can't tell the software "Use Route 90". This sucks if you know what road you'd like to be used for a specific part of your route, but want the software to handle the rest. Attempting to approximate this using the waypoint feature usually leads to really BIZARRE routings..... "Shortest" is a waste of time. It'll be "shortest" all right - right down every residential street between where you are and where you want to go. "Fastest" is the only reasonable route option to use, unless you want one of the specialty ones (bicycling?! Ok, I guess that makes sense) Time to destination is stupidly off on many non-freeways. Basically, it appears that the software thinks of everything off-freeway as being 25mph or somesuch! I've had it claim that a 50 mile drive on surface highways, all of which is a 55 or 65mph zone with the exception of a few small "one light" towns where you have to slow down for a couple of miles, is a 2+ hour trip. Balderdash. It appears that the "speed class" on any road that has a slow zone in it is set - for the entire duration - as that slower speed. This is a major botch and makes time prediction for anything other than freeway driving rediculously wrong. Freeway speed zoning appears to be wrong too, but less badly - it sure isn't 70mph through all the 70mph states..... No automatic day/night palette switching. This one is so easy I'm shocked, to be honest. Oh well; a few clicks does it. The software is a total CPU pig, to the point that it blows up VoiceCommand if called while its running. This means you can't initiate a voice call while TT is operating on the PPC, as there aren't enough cycles left on the CPU. Granted, this may be just "reality" on the MDA, as its not a terribly powerful machine - but it still is a bummer. The software allows you to load as many "regional" maps as you'd like. The stupidity of this, however, is that you can't route inter-region. Dumber! So you have to switch to "Major Roads of America", and then switch to your destination region and recompute when you enter it. That I can live with, but I won't tell you I like it - to be honest, I think it kinda sucks. 2GB MiniSD cards are available, and as such you can load the whole map store on ONE card - why not allow seamless navigation as an option? Beware their copy protection system. Their "code" requires an online connection to register the software, and there are only TWO codes available - ever - which must be acquired six months apart from each other. God help you if your device breaks outside of that range - you've got a box full of worthless CDs. A support request when I was attempting to get the software to load was ignored. I figured it out on my own - several days later - without a response. Don't expect help from the company, because you won't get it. I didn't attempt to use the "PLUS" services because, quite honestly, if you can't provide accurate maps - why would I buy add-on services that are likely no more accurate? I bought this because TT is thought of as the "leader" in the marketplace. The user interface is nice, the product works, but the map inaccuracies, protection scheme and complete lack of customer support leave me recommending against it and giving it only ONE star. Nice try TomTom. 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