tomtom sat nav help

[booboo]

Hi everybody , last year i bought a tomtom go 700 it was a refurbished model from ebay,my question is that ive only used it in the uk and going to use it in france soon ,when i go through the menu to the postcode function it brings up two choices great britain and netherlands,so i go back to the address function uk and an get france only by putting in the whole french address ,is this quite normal ? or should i be able to use the postcode function and just put in the french postcode.Thanks for any help in my question. CHEERS KEITH

[Itexuk]

Yes it is normal. I gather you can only put in post codes for UK and Netherlands for rest of Europe you have to enter address.

On one site it says.

Get past the customisation and using the TeleAtlas software is a breeze. Addresses can be entered via the usual array of address details including postcode (only for UK and Netherlands) and once entered you can then chose to view the route in text format, picture format or as a demo of the route so you have a rough idea what lies ahead all before you get going. If you don't know the address you can check if it's a point of interest and fast food lovers will relish the idea of knowing that their nearest McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King etc is only x miles away.

 

[Randonneur]

Hi Keith,

 

Here in France the postcode doesn't just cover a few houses it covers a very large area. Our postcode for instance is the same as the main small town and all the outlying villages have the same postcode. Our postcode is the same as our Daughters' postcode and she lives 6kms away. The postman/woman has to know the names of all the people on their rounds because most places do not have house numbers. So putting a French postcode into a SatNav device isn't much good unless its a City.

 

If you have a problem finding a destination, try using google earth and once you have found what you are looking for then use the GPS co-ordinates this may help.

 

hope this helps.

 

Sylvia

 

 

[booboo]

Thanks very much Itexuk and sylvia for your replies,that explains alot sylvia your info on the postcodes.never been to sure about all these gps cordinates and how you use them *-) cheers keith

[BGD]

I think the postcode situation here is the same as in France, and a number of other European countries, in that a psotcode covers a whole town ( or a part of a city), postcodes here don't "zoom" to any level more detailed than that.

 

If travelling a long distance we can put the postcode of the Spanish town we are headed for into our Tomtom720Go, but in practice that's just the same as keying in the name of the town.

 

If aiming at any destination more detailed than "town" in Spain, you really need the street name, or the actual lat/longitude, or for it to be a POI of some sort.