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OT: What satnav?
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I'm looking to get a satnav doohicky for the car and in the £250-£350
bracket. With such a wide choice available, I was wondering if any of you
have first hand experience with the likes of the Tomtom Go 510 or the Garmin
Nuvi 300 etc. Is this the way to go or am I better off with a PDA +
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Buy a map and learn to read road signs. Pay special attention to signs that
say "deep ford".
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Unless you require the additional facilities of a PDA then a dedicated
solution is the one I'd reccomend, far simpler to use and maintain.
In that price range the GO510 is a good solution, also consider the Garmin
c510.
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software?
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If I was buying again, I'd get a dedicated unit - the main bugbear I have
with my iPAQ is that you only get a car charger for the iPAQ and therefore
the bluetooth GPS receiver can run out of power on a long trip. Either that
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I bought the TomTom Navigator for Palm PDA and the bluetooth GPS had a
charger for it. Did you mean that you can only run one at a time, or that
you really didn't get a charger for the GPS?
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or take a DC to AC converter and run that off the fag lighter socket which
creates loads of fuss and wires and requires swapping the leads every couple
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Which bit do you need an AC supply for?
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of hours (The GPS receiver lasts about 6 hours on a charge, the iPAQ can be
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I've got an Arkon mount for the car. It was about 30 quid, has 3 usb
sockets for plugging in USB charge cables and one takeoff for the GPS
charge cable. All works off the cig lighter. It charges the pda,
tomtom reciever and would do the phone if I put the USB cable in the
car.
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I used the GPS for 15 hours on one charge when in Canada. My Palm T5
lasts a lot longer than 2 hours also.
I think the main issue for me is that the system used to crash a lot,
requiring a reset on the PDA - which is slightly easier if you have a
passenger. The latest version seems to be fine with the UK maps, but I
had a load more issues with the Canadian maps.
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as little as 2....)
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I have an iPaq with TomTom which is brilliant, although it's a bit of a
PITA to hook up in the car.
Which is why I've just ordered a Garmin i3 from eBuyer for £130
delivered.
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I've got a Garmin iQue M5 which is a PDA based unit retailing at about
500 notes. Given the choice again I'd have gone for a dedicated device
like the Tomtom range as I don't need all the other stuff the PDA does.
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A sign of the times.
Matrix display on the main road in to the city centre today:
"Remember to remove Sat Nav when parking"
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That is really funny. I guess everybody really DOES have one now?
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At £350, you could go an extra £50 and get a TomTom Rider from ebuyer.
Thats what I'm going to get when I flog my TomTom One. Whatever you end up
with, you're almost certainly better off with the dedicated unit. It'll
probably boil down to buttons or touchscreen...
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I really like the TomTom brands - I've used the GO 300 and really liked
it - was really easy to use, the Tele Atlas maps were very accurate -
even in the area around my mom's house, which is kind of rural, all
around excellent. It's what I would tell anybody looking for a sat nav
to start with, you kind of can't screw it up (basing this on myself
back when i first used one, very easy!) I prefer the portable car
units myself to PDA versions, for some reason just feels better for me,
and I'd probably only use it in the car anyway. I've heard lots of good
things about the new GO 510 models, I think you'd be pretty happy with
one!
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