For those of you who like me are happy users of TomTom Navigator3, but unlike me don't subscribe to TomTom's newsletters:
TomTom Navigator5 is now available, to which users of TomTom Navigator3 can upgrade for EUR59 (Just over forty quid) plus postage.
Link: www.tomtom.com/shop/upgrade.php?action=pdasub2
Included in the price is:
> New Interface and features
> Full postcode navigation in UK and the Netherlands
> New GB maps (Let's see if the new Tring bypass extension is shown!)
> All the detail maps for Europe, including (never before available) the Czech Republic and Poland. This suits me fine because in a few weeks time I'm going to be driving from the UK to the Czech Republic!
This is stonking value (I paid £100 for the TomTom Navigator3 versions of the Western Europe detailed maps alone a few months ago, though thankfully have had plenty of use of them in the mean time!)
The only restriction is that the new software is not compatible with the following PDAs:
Fujitsu Siemens (all models)
Toshiba (all models)
Siemens SX 56
Acer N10
Eten P700
Mitac Mio 558
PackardBell Pocket Gear 3025
ViewSonic V37
Yakumo DELTA 300 , DELTA 400
ASUS MyPal
TomTom add "We are working on achieving compatibility with the Toshiba and Fujitsu Siemens devices by Autumn 2005. For technical reasons, NAVIGATOR 5 will unfortunately not be made compatible for the other devices on the list."
Other TomTom products (like GO) are also updated, but I didn't research the detail as they are of no interest to me.
Well, I've upgraded and wait for the thunk on the doormat.
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I read yesterday that Tom Tom have signed up John Cleese as a voice. Fawlty navigation . . .
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I'd do a backup and/or make a note of your existing authorisation code.
When you upgrade to 5 you lose your 3 authorisation.
When you find 5 doesn't do half the things 3 did you find you can't reinstall and activate 3.
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I'd do a backup and/or make a note of your existing authorisation code. When you upgrade to 5 you lose your 3 authorisation. When you find 5 doesn't do half the things 3 did you find you can't reinstall and activate 3.
I have already, thanks.
I did so on the day I first installed TT3.
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TT5 is now "common platform", looks identical to TT Go but a lot of things suffered in the process and program itself is extremely buggy. They've rewritten GPS code, so with some third party receivers, that worked perfectly with TT3 you have to wait up to 3 - 4 minutes for lock to satellites. It takes forever on my Navman jacket and Ipaq 3950 and until TT finds satellites all menus are ground to a halt. Once I go into tunnel it takes approx 500 yards for TT5 to regain general sense of directon and further 100 to start showing correct route. Screen refresh is quicker but map rotation is too slow for city environment. Clean info bar from TT3 is now changed to crowded TT Go style malarkey with tiny speed indicator and unclean street names. Menus have huge fonts and seem to be going on forever without much sense, you can't tailor them or customise. Route choosing engine is different too and incorporates strange options such us "Avoid motorways", "Walking route" and "Bicycle route" but doesn't give you option to avoid small, single lane country roads instead of leading van drivers and large car owners into most awfully narrow and slowest paths known to men.
In other words, it might be good for smartphones and fixed devices, but as an upgrade to TT3 it's actually step back, or rather, step sideways into wrong directon.
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You can change menus. There's a thread on a www.pocketgps.co.uk forum. There's even a website to help you build the necessary menu file.
I'm pleased with TT5 on my PDA. Enough good about it to not want to go back to TT3.
BTW menus do not grind to a halt without a GPS fix. You cannot choose navigate to but you can plan a route from A to B and view the route planned route (text, images, map, demo of variable speed, etc.)
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You can change menus. There's a thread on a www.pocketgps.co.uk forum. There's even a website to help you build the necessary menu file.
Yes, you can HACK the menus. Not change them. It's a huge difference. There is no menu customising option out of the box. Just like you have to resort to adding extra folders for post code search to work, bacause it's broken after installation.
BTW menus do not grind to a halt without a GPS fix.
They do. While trying to get GPS fix at highest baud all resources on my IPAQ are maxed out. You can't even pull up start menu without 30 second delay.
My installation DVD also suffers from "Read only" bug, config files are transferred as "read only" upon installation and TT5 forgets all favourites, POI warnings and home location is reset to nothing every time application is restarted. Once again, the only way to fix it is to resort to simple "hack" of files on memory card in external card reader... Sigh...
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Well, I'll see! I have no choice in upgrading to TT5 though simply to get the map of Czech Republic that I want as TT5 maps are not backwards compatible with TT3.
Will post how I get on with my iPAQ 2210 and awesome SysOnChip CF card antenna; at the moment I have a cracking setup that works a treat!
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Have switched to TT5 with mine and it works OK (2210 & CF GPS), If it wasn't for the updated map (TT3 does not have M6 Toll so most of the junctions on my route to work are out of date) I would switch back.
GPS fix by the time I have done 300 yds from a cold start.
It does "grey out" the map occasionally when it loses a satelite or two but continues to show progress - maybe it thinks its fix is not accurate enough but it has always shown a correct route.
The loss of the "use previous fix to plan route" is a big loss since I nearly always start from the place it last had a fix.
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