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quite right turbo, my exact thoughts. Been involved with tea leaves too long. I need a life.
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I thought the advantage of the fitted ones was that they worked better in a car environment - mini gyroscopes and propshaft sensors to continue motion detection when the signal goes missing.
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They do work better but can cost 3 to 4 times as much for a slight improvement in tunnels and urban canyons.
I think TomTom is an excellent product and I have just upgraded to the 910. Under £300 gives functionality that would cost over £2k in options from the manufacturer.
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Quite right Zippy. SWMBO's TT5 is easily as good and more flexible than the std fit BMW units I've had in the last few cars and it costs a fraction of the factory items.
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"Quite right Zippy. SWMBO's TT5 is easily as good and more flexible than the std fit BMW units I've had in the last few cars and it costs a fraction of the factory items."
Fair point, but I only have to press a button to have my in car sat nav roll up/down out of the dash and I don't have to worry about having some local scrote noticing the suction cup marks on the windscreen and think "I'll break in to the car to see what's in the glove box". I took my boss out on a trip recently who didn't know I'd got sat nav in the car and I let him build his ego up by bringing his Tom Tom. He admitted in the end that my in car solution was better because it told us where to head for (i.e. which town/city) instead of saying "left, left, right, right" all the time. It was also far faster at recalculating a route than his Tom Tom.
I use both in-car and aftermarket (in SWMBO's car). I'm male, can't read a map while driving and won't stop and ask for directions unless SWMBO is in the passenger seat to do it for me. Give me in-car anytime. This time next year sat nav will be last year's air con.
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I am reasonably technical and knew that it had Bluetooth technology, but when the thing actually read out a text message sent to me - including properly expanding abbreviations - I was most impressed!
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but when the thing actually read out a text message sent to me -
Depending on the content of the SMS, that could be embarrassing if you had passengers on board.
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>> but when the thing actually read out a text message sent to me - Depending on the content of the SMS, that could be embarrassing if you had passengers on board.
Sounds like Dave gets more interesting texts than I do ...
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At today's prices, give me portable any time.
My TomTom v5 installed on iPAQ 2110 is used in two cars, on one motorbike, and one mountain bike that we own, plus countless rental cars all over Europe when I am on business, and frequently friends and family cars abroad when we are on holiday. It is faster to recalculate than any built-in unit that I've experienced, including the hugely expensive one in my brother's Volvo XC90, the digital voice is far less annoying - there is something that bugs about the strident tone in the Volvo - the displayed map is far easier to interpret, and the GUI (interface) quicker and more intuitive to use thanks to touch screen. The predictive guidance is excellent, even allowing me to take a correct turning (yes, a junction) in a Munich road tunnel, and in back-to-back tests, for the chosen route profile the TomTom setup is usually the more efficient. I also consequently have a pocket computer that I sometimes take on business in lieu of laptop, and music and video player for the flight.
Top Kit, and the £2000 I saved over having the built in one in my V70 can be put to other use. A small price for waiting typically 10 seconds on boot-up to get a satellite fix and not having a "cool" motorised screen to rise up out of the center speaker grille. I don't need the phone or "Volvo On Call" that comes with the built-in one, either.
TomTom deserve to succeed with their OEM initiative, but I fear that the "expensive accessories is where the profit comes from" remark is very true; it will take someone to sieze on the marketing benefit and break the mould for the others to follow.
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Oh, I have two speed camera and POI databases installed too that no OEM system I have tried allows, plus an add-in application to do useful things with the speed camera alerts such as have both first and second warnings, and to base these on time instead of distance.
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TomTom also allows an unlimited number of locations to be stored (using POIs) and which built in system will take me to the nearest hypermarket in France without me knowing the address of the store!
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BMW have been offering Garmin nuvi and Streetpilots as accessories for the 1-series for some time.
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But probably as dealer-fitted options and probably at 50% more than even Halfords.
Where it does make sense initially is for relatively low volume manufacturers that won't want to licence someone else's custom-made system. However people like Kia (when they import relatively few cars to Europe) or Lotus (who just don't make that many cars in the first place) won't want to develop or localise their own system or alternatively don't have the resources to do so. For them, a TomTom interface is likely to be superior (and probably cheaper) than a DIN fit unit or bundling a portable unit.
Meanwhile TomTom is able to protect its revenue stream - as better interfaces come onto the market, and more new cars are delivered with built-in systems (if the company leasing budget allows it, people will swallow the option price) and more and more people add their own portable unit to older cars, demand for portable units will eventually peak and decline.
Air con was offered initially in the mainstream as a way of tarting up outgoing models like the Peugeot 405 and a built-in TomTom might be a good way of shifting (say) the 407 when it gets its end-of-life facelift in around 2010, which would eventually hasten adoption across the market as others eventually compete, even if the 408 is launched without it.
Eventually, if TomTom is able to combine a superior interface and a strong brand with ease of integration, and can offer its product to OEMs at prices that enable a significant onward profit (partly from reduced development costs) then this is a great strategic move even for high volume manufacturers.
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I suspect built-in systems are expensive due to colossal markup, not because they are expensive to make, Look how cheap you can get a laptop with 15" colour widescreen, charger, Lipo battery, DVDR, wireless network, bluetooth, ethernet, firewire, DVI, USB, keyboard, trackpad, 2MP camera, hard disk, 2GB RAM all built in for about £700, so why does some basic bit of electronics such as a sat nav with a small screen cost £1800 or so as an option? Exactly.
I doubt there would be much takeup for this TomTom from manufacturers unless it's also sold at top price with additional features such as web browsing. Something with all the features, but with the ease of use and intuitiveness of the Apple iPhone in the dashboard would be really good though, and I think this will be a watershed for devices with lots of plastic buttons..
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I suspect built-in systems are expensive due to colossal markup
Err, isn't that what some have already said?
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You can buy, from Comet, a complete satnav system for £99. The salesman told me that you could only store 6 addresses (whatever that meant) and that it wouldn't take you to the door, only to the first 5 digits of the postcode...
Compare that to tomtom mobile that I bought 18 months ago.
I don't believe that it will take, DavidHM, until 2010 before they become rather more common built it. If I were Kia's marketing department, they'd already be in there.
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Maybe I'm missing the point but I don't see much use for my Tom Tom. If I'm going to a destination I know which motorway to take, I know which direction to drive. The tom tom is useful for the last 5 miles but that's about it. It's also handy when you're in a strange city and all you want to do is go home so you hit the home button and off it goes.
The worst thing about it is sticking it to the windscreen. Best practice says don't leave it on view or it will get nicked - don't even leave the docking station stuck to your windscreen or they'll know it's in the glove compartment and break in to steal it. So every journey becomes a ritual of find Tom Tom in glove box, find docking station, attach to windscreen, switch on, program journey, wait 5 minutes and then maybe it will start to work. In bright sunlight with a bit of condensation on the windscreen all I see is several circular rings where I once stuck the Tom Tom. Not very nice.
Many journeys recently I have just balanced it on the dash for the last few miles. It's just too much effort to actually stick it to the windscreen and difficult when you're driving. My Tom Tom (very new) has a habit of drooping so you have to kep tilting it upwards to be able to see it. All very distracting.
I also find that I don't use it much so every time I pull it out of the glovebox it has lost its charge so to use it I have to fiddle with the docking station, the cigarette lighter socket and by the time I've made it work I've lost 5 minutes I could have been driving.
And there's more....
I don't think the instructions are that good. I'm sure I can do great things with a tom tom but the documentation is pretty poor. Mine is rarely used.
In conclusion since I paid £350 for mine it's spent most of it's life sitting in my glove book discharging. I could have done much better with my £350 - They're overrated.
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>>Maybe I'm missing the point but I don't see much use for my Tom Tom. If I'm going to a destination I know which motorway to take, I know which direction to drive.
What about the three times I've driven to Stansted Airport in the wee small hours to find the M25 closed? Because the destination was already set (even though I have driven the route a gazillion times), all I had to do was touch the screen a few times to change a section ahead long enough to miss out the likely problem. Once for example I could see the accident just past the junction I was taken off at, so set 400 yards to guarantee it brought me back on at the next junction. Completely stress free, and (I was an early adopter) on two of the occasions I rejoined an empty motorway have taken tiny lanes I would never have had the courage to take otherwise and which clearly others didn't, either.
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Another thing to possibly consider is that built-in satnavs will certainly be a boon to HM Gov and other motorist bashers, who will think how wonderful it will be for the "pay by satellite" ideas.
And, of course, our speeds will be noted as well...
Oh the joy of technology...
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