Len Salisbury Posted August 3, 2016 Share Posted August 3, 2016 I bought a TomTom Go last week from Halfords and have been disappointed in the performance compared to my Garmin. I cannot find for example hotels or campsites like Garmin does. I could not find before going away so purchased TomTom.what am I doing wrong before I take it back to Halfords? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colin Posted August 3, 2016 Share Posted August 3, 2016 Have you read the recent threads on satnav? If you are trying to load 3rd party poi's, finding them is not as straight forward as earlier models. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJA Posted August 3, 2016 Share Posted August 3, 2016 I would agree that the Garmin search facility seems better than Tomtoms. My Problem with Garmin is the Mapping and Routing which does not appear to be as good as the Tomtom's. To search for Campsites on the newer Tomtoms for example. Tap Menu Tap Search Tap Whole Map (top right) Tap In town or city Type Town/City you want to search. (Appears top Right ) Tap Town you want from the list in Right column. ie Which Newport (Left Column) Type Campsite (Appears top left) Tap 3 bars Right of space bar to see list of Campsites, or Tap 2 Circle to the right of 3 Lines to see locations on map. If you tap a Campsite shown on the map then details about it appear and the option to select. In the Details are 3 vertical dots which tapped gives you the option to get more information which then details the address and contact details. With 3rd Party POI's if loaded it is actually easier as you can search the POI file by Whole map, Near you, In Town or City or if you have a route selected, Along Route or near destination. Certainly the POI system on the Tomtom's needs significant improvement and they are under a lot of pressure to do someting about it. Cannot say when they will get on top of the problem. Hope that helps Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALAN G Posted August 3, 2016 Share Posted August 3, 2016 DJA, that is brilliant. I have just bought a TomTom Go 60 and your instructions work perfectly. I can even find supermarkets near the foreign campsites I will be using in September. With my old TomTom I had to pinpoint icons on the travel map. This should be a lot easier. However, there is another discussion ongoing as to whether you should buy TomTom or Garmin. From my experience this week I should avoid TomTom. My brand new Go60 failed within 3 hours by not updating completely. At 77%, with 2 minutes to go,it just froze with the warning "Updating, Don't disconnect" and a circular icon rotating I could find no useful actions in either My Drive or the 105 page Tom Tom Start User manual. I emailed TomTom Support and was promised they would contact me "SOON". Frustration changed to annoyance when, after several more unrequited pleas for help I had to telephone TomTom two days later .The conversation was difficult with a clipped voice at the other end of the line. Eventually, after several hours a technician sent a signal to clear the fault. Hopefully it will stay cleared. Tom Tom have apologised but say they had a" heavy call flow". This means, of course that they are not providing sufficient staff for the job. My queries with TomTom over the last ten years have always been answered quickly and helpfully. The situation appears different today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colin Posted August 3, 2016 Share Posted August 3, 2016 ALAN G - 2016-08-03 7:32 PM My queries with TomTom over the last ten years have always been answered quickly and helpfully. The situation appears different today. My last phone conversation with TT was five years ago, it was anything but helpful, the operative all but called me an idiot, after someone on here came up with an answer and it was passed on to TT the response was that we didn't know what we where talking about. Unfortunately I was seduced by the lifetime world maps and european traffic of 5100. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJA Posted August 3, 2016 Share Posted August 3, 2016 Hi Alan G Funnily enough I seem to have few problems when updating which is possibly because I have a fast broadband connection. One thing I find can cure the problem of the update stalling is to ignore the instruction and disconnect the unit and after a few seconds reconnect it. It usually then restarts from where it was stuck. As I said before I have a current model Garmin and my reservations are the mapping and routing. I live 25 miles from central London and its mapping in my area has some omissions and it completely ignores an A class road unless you start to drive along it. Then at one junction it says ignore left turn and take next in 20mtrs, It then diects you through the row of shops car park before returning you to the turning it ignored in the first place. It got me to Cornwall and back okay but I am concerned that if it acts like this where I live what else will it do. Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Salisbury Posted August 4, 2016 Author Share Posted August 4, 2016 I have just seen and copied the instructions and it seems to work. Thank you. When purchased I thought all these items would have been loaded with clear instruction on how to find them. There are 25 pages of instructions is go to page ??? for more details including adverts. How are Nerds going to find this info? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colin Posted August 4, 2016 Share Posted August 4, 2016 DJA - 2016-08-03 11:40 PM As I said before I have a current model Garmin and my reservations are the mapping and routing. I live 25 miles from central London and its mapping in my area has some omissions and it completely ignores an A class road unless you start to drive along it. Then at one junction it says ignore left turn and take next in 20mtrs, It then diects you through the row of shops car park before returning you to the turning it ignored in the first place. It got me to Cornwall and back okay but I am concerned that if it acts like this where I live what else will it do. Doug This piqued my interest, a search reveals that Garmin use Navteq,(or at least has since 2012) my experience of Here Maps which also uses Navteq would indicate that it is much poorer at routing than TT, as an example, instead of routing straight across Ickwell Green on a tarmac road it routes around the edge on a rough track. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJA Posted August 4, 2016 Share Posted August 4, 2016 If you have loaded your own POI files say for Aires then you can search within those files very easily as follows:- Tap Menu Tap My Places ( which is where the unit stores your POI files which appear at the bottom of the My Places List) Tap the POI file you wish to search The Name of the POI file appears top Left in Green. If you tap the 3 bar icon bottom left you will see the list of POI's starting with the nearest from you. If you tap the 2 Circles next to 3 bars you see them on the map with the nearest being a bigger Spot Tap a Spot and you can see its name and if you tap the 3 vertical dots you can get more info if available. If you tap Whole Map (Top Right) you can Tap Near me or In Town or City, if you have a route loaded on the unit then you can also select Along Route or Near Destination. Tap the 3 bars bottom right or the 2 circles to do the same as described above. By the way when you select Along Route it will list POI's quite a few miles off the route and is not limited to those right next to where you are going. Also the list it produces is the POI's along the route starting with those nearest to you. If you index down the list sometimes it will search for more and add to the list those that bit further away If you want to enter Long and Lat which some have had difficulty finding out how to do it. Tap Menu Tap Search Tap Whole Map (Top Right) Scroll down and select Long and Lat 9 (The examples of Long and Lat shown are the formats it recognises and is your current position) If you have any other questions please ask and if I know how to answer them I will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colin Posted August 4, 2016 Share Posted August 4, 2016 The problem AFAIC is that TT cannot display different groups of POI's at same time on a map, with my old Via125 I can look at map and see POI's with their own image. So I can see what campsites and their classification, i.e are they a club site, certified site, aire, archies, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJA Posted August 4, 2016 Share Posted August 4, 2016 Hi Colin You are correct. At the moment I have not found out how to display POI's on a map with a Garmin either inbuilt or 3rd Party so the same applies until I find out it can be done. Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyishuk Posted August 4, 2016 Share Posted August 4, 2016 Slightly O/Topic but useful to know when using new Tomtoms If you need waypoints on your route, you can zoom to maximum a part of the route and put an "Add to route" in the CENTRE of the road. As you drive over the mark, TT announces that you have reached your destination and carries on along your route. If your mark has any hint of an address, the Tomtom will keep telling you to U turn to go back to that location, until you cancel the stop. That said, the TT can decide a better route, whilst you are in transit and take you down roads you may not want to use, to get to your waypoint. Dont know what TT did with the " old knowledge", but they really made a mess of the new generation of TTs Rgds Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyishuk Posted August 4, 2016 Share Posted August 4, 2016 colin - 2016-08-04 10:22 AM The problem AFAIC is that TT cannot display different groups of POI's at same time on a map, with my old Via125 I can look at map and see POI's with their own image. So I can see what campsites and their classification, i.e are they a club site, certified site, aire, archies, etc. Another problem with the new TTs is that as you add favorites (Now called My Places), you get a flag marking the spot tht does not scale. So if you have a more than a few My Places, the screen is full of the markers and you cannot see your route unless zoomed out. You cannot make My Places to a POI, easily. Even if you do make a set of POIs from your My Places, you have the same problem as described above, there is no specific icon, to tell you what it is. Rgds Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith T Posted August 4, 2016 Share Posted August 4, 2016 I bought a TT GO1005 last year, and am still struggling with it and yet finding new things that I am sure weren't there to start with! It is far inferior and far less user friendly than the previous Go model I had, I think a 5001 or something like that, and I have complained repeatedly about the shortcomings to TT but nothing seems to have changed seriously. Even finding out how to set coordinates for destination was not immediately obvious, and expecting to read the actual MPH-kph using white lettering on a grey background just shows they never actually test them in real like situations. It may well work in a dark lab where they 'design' (!!) the, but certainly not on the open road in sunshine! As far as 'my places' is concerned, I haven't yet found how to get to one starting with say 'T' without scanning done the right hand bar all the way from 'A'...I certainly agree about the map being covered with what you have already saved as 'my places', and agree that its only by zooming out - which you may not wish to do for other reasons - that you can see the roads! There are several other featured which are not available but were there on the older model. Progress- not in my view! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geeco Posted August 5, 2016 Share Posted August 5, 2016 I downloaded the European map package to my TT GO50 for our recent holiday driving around Italy. While it was ok for finding a route from one place to another, it fell down badly trying to locate specific addresses of accomodation. In a number of cases the address was not able to be located in the database or it directed us to a location nowhere near the actual location. When we first started touring Europe years ago there were no GPS devices just a simple map and a codriver. We seemed to find our way, sometimes with raised voices at the end of the journey so I guess even a not so brilliant GPS is easier than having to apologise to the codriver for a raised voice! As a footnote the TT works almost perfectly in AU in out AT Tracker so why not in Europe? But then the water does go down the plug hole in Europe in a different rotation direction than here!Cheers, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJA Posted August 5, 2016 Share Posted August 5, 2016 Hi Len Have you downloaded the user manual form Tomtom. These are about 125 pages long. They can be found here http://uk.support.tomtom.com/app/manual?filter=manuals Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJA Posted August 5, 2016 Share Posted August 5, 2016 Hi Geeco The format for addressing in Europe is not standardised. Finding addresses in many parts of Europe is not as easy as we find in the UK. Here the units recognise street names, house numbers and Post Codes. The later however is only to direct you to a street, or pat thereof, or smallish rural area but not to the front door so to speak. I have seen people complain about finding addresses in Portugal for example where they have Post Codes. However the codes's only direct you to a village and its surroundings or a largish area of say Lisbon. Particularly in villages pinpointing where a house or business is can be very difficult. One solution would be if people used Mapcodes instead of Post Codes. These are usable on Tomtoms but not on other GPS's and are almost accurate enough to pinpoint a parking bay in a car park. Long/Lat is the only accurate method which is why you find they are given for Aires and Campsites as inputting anything else can be a problem for places like this. You can go to the Mapcode website and find out the mapcode for anywhere in the world. There is a very nice quiet campsite we go to in the UK where the Postcode is 1/4 of a mile away and there is no campsite signs at the entrance. We could not find it and we were within 200yds of it talking to another Motorhomer who was also looking for it. Use a mapcode or Long/Lat and no problem. Regards Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJA Posted August 5, 2016 Share Posted August 5, 2016 Hi Keith T The displaying of My Places on the map is definitely a problem and there has been a request to Tomtom from many who feel like you to include an option to be able to Stop them being displayed. It is to be hoped that they will eventually resolve the problem. One interim solution, but fiddly and time consuming, is to use a programme like Tyre, the free version, and create a POI file of your My Places then you can delete them from the unit and therefore stop them displaying. Interestly if you were to name the POI file as Favourites which is what they were on the old units then you can force the file to the Top of the list of POI files in your My Places by adding a "_" at the front, ie _Favourites. Doing this enables you to have more My Places than the 90 ish you are limited to at the moment. You can then search the POI file by Whole Map, Near Me, in Town or City, Along Route or Near Destination. Regards Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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