Satalite Navigation - Which One to buy/

[Guest Charles Chodkowski]

Garmin, Tom Tom 700 there are so many, what are members opinions, should we buy or does it take a lot of fun out of trying to get through places like Tours and always ending up going the wrong way! But seriously which one do members think is the best.

[Guest martin]

If you carry a laptop then use it - software for all of Europe to street level (17 countires) for under £70 and use any handheld or plug in receiver/aerial. Happy to give more info if you want it - all main brands all use the same database, so it is down to pocket and if it works the way you want it to.

[Guest martin]

Sorry can I add that using a Garmin hand held unit to feed your lap top means you can load it with map data from the lap top and take it away with you as you walk or cycle round whreever you are going - saved us in more than one city!

[Guest Charles Chodkowski]

Thankyou Martin, We do travel with a laptopb but wouldn't that be a bit bulky in the front of the cab? But yes I would love more information. Can we e-mail Direct?

[Guest mick t]

I have a tomtom700 and so far have been very happy with it, it also doubles as hands free kit for mobile phone via blue tooth

[Guest Clive]

Been looking at this for some time. General consensus on the IT forums seems to be to get a Palm and instal software, Tom-Tom or similar. This then gives you a machine that has many more uses than just sat nav and also lets you try different sat nav programs. Having said that I haven,t parted with any of my money yet! Good luck with the quest.

[Guest David Powell]

Good evening Charles, After being given loads of advise by the knowledgable ones of this Forum, I eventualy bought an Acer n35 GPS hand held Destinator3 PDA from Comet. So easy to use, even I can do it. It has a holder to place in the position that you require in the cab, or pop it in your top pocket to talk you back to your 'van after going walkies. It has never got lost, even though I do, and she does not shout at me like the Wife does when I fail to follow orders. £250 last year but it is down to about £199 now, and has 5 years extended cover for any misshap except loss.

[Guest Charles Chodkowski]

Hi David, Does this have European mapping and if so to what extent and how easy was it to load the maps on to it?

[Guest David Powell]

Good morning Charles, It comes with UK & Ireland, but if you ask for European, you get that with it also, just feed it in while familierising it with your PC for Emailing etc while you are away. I find my local Comet staff very helpful, our local manager has the same one, which does not mean it is good or anything, as he probably got it at staff price. At least if you get one from Comet there is usually one close by for problem sorting.

[Guest Mel B]

We bought a Mitac Mio PDA with Co-Pilot sat nav software off eBay last year - it was a God-send both here and abroad, unfortunately though it later developed a motherboard problem - just one of those things that can happen but it was sorted under warranty as it was only 2 months old when we bought it. We did however change the sat nav software to Tom Tom as we prefer this but the Co-Pilot one is still a very good system and when we bought it, it came with full UK and European mapping. European mapping is something to watch for as to buy the full European mapping can add anything up to £100 to the price. You often get some basic European mapping with them but it's not really any good unless you just want to head for major cities as it's not detailed enough. Before we bought it we did a lot of research and decided on a PDA (not an iPac as these are a bit limited) rather than a dedicated unit because we could then change the sat nav package if we wanted to and also the PDA itself is useful for writing notes, keeping a diary, viewing photos, keeping accounts, names, addresses and telephone numbers etc which you can't do with a dedicated sat nav system. They also can work out quite a bit cheaper than a dedicated unit which is what we found. It is also very portable so you can easily take it out and about with you no problem, again unlike some of the dedicated sat nav systems which are like mini CRT TV monitors and can be heavy. It easily goes in a jacket pocket as it's only about 3 x 4.5 inches.

[Guest martin]

Happy to give you all the references and details of how we do it - just leave your address and I'll drop you a note

[Guest Malcolm M]

I've been using a Medion PDA based system for about 3 years and have been very satisfied with it. Newer versions are better and considerably cheaper - especially if you look out for bargains in Aldi. Good customer service, too (based in Swindon).

[Guest Charles Chodkowski]

Hello Martin, Thanks for the kind offer, my e-mail address is - jacqui.charles@care4free.net Regards Charles

[Guest David Lloyd]

Hi - we use an O2 PDA with TOMTOM sat nav covering the whole of europe - very good navigation and used as a mobile phone and small hand held PC too.

[Guest Charles Chodkowski]

Hi David, Which Tom Tom software do you use, how much of Europe can you put onto your PDA and how good is the software for getting you through European cities and towns (I can find my way to the towns ok its just getting through them sometimes!) Regards

[Guest Mel B]

No, I'm not Charles, but for what it's worth: We use Tom Tom Navigator version 5, we can put as many maps on as we want, it just depends on the size of your storage card, eg: GB 100mb France 250mb Germany 217mb Sweden 93mb Italy 205mb Norway 56mb Switzerland 23mb You store the countries on that you want, then if you go for example from GB to France, you open Tom Tom and then switch the country mapping so that it uses the one you select. There is also a 'major roads of Europe' map with is 81mb which will guide you through each country on the major routes if you don't want street level detail, this saves you having to change at each border! What we tend to do is have 2 or 3 storage cards with us with the various countries' maps on different cards as well as keeping a cheap laptop with us so that we can download maps as necessary onto the PDA storage cards, but if you do this before you leave home you won't need a laptop. You can get quite large capacity storage cards now but if it goes wonky or gets damaged you've lost it completely. At least with 2 or 3 smaller ones you haven't lost everything. We didn't buy our storage cards when we got our PDA but got them off the internet instead as they are a lot cheaper and if you buy 2 or 3 at a time they are even cheaper still! Just work out what size of storage cards you need for the maps you want to use (with a little bit of extra capacity). The mapping is extremely good and can get you through cities etc pretty easily so long as there aren't road works or recently closed roads as the software will think you've taken a wrong turning and try to get you to go back the 'right' way, even if you physically can't. But this is a minor problem, as it could be even if you had a map, and a bit of common sense soon gets you back on track. It is a real help getting you OUT of towns in the right direction - as you say getting into them isn't usually a problem!!! Hope this helps.

[Guest Colin Robinson]

I have looked at Tomtom 700, Navman etc. but I haven't yet found one that has street level details for Greece, our intended touring place for this year. Does anyone know of one that covers this country? I was informed by the Tomtom supplier that it depends on what data the country's authorities release to the satnav system.

[Guest Dave Newell]

Colin, It's not the actual hardware that determines the level of mapping available for any given country. All the mapping is provided for all the various manufacturers by either Navtech or TeleAtlas. These two companies provide all the mapping and if they haven't mapped all of the Greek roads, for example, you won't find any satnav that covers it any better than any other one. By the way VDO Dayton and Blaupunkt have both now launched portable systems with pretty similar specs, buit in rechargeable battery so it can literally be carried and used on foot, MP3 player, JPEG picture viewer, 3.5" TFT touch screen etc. I've not seen either of these in the flesh, so to speak, but from past experience VDO built in systems have about the easiest user interface of all that I've seen. Hopefully this has been carried over to the new portable. They're not cheap but probably at the upper end of the portable price range, still it's worth a look before you buy. Dave.