But really are you telling me that you didn't realise where Derby is?

Well I've never been there, or had reason to learn its location. I just knew it was North-ish.

To me, the country is Wales, Middle England, Londoney bit, East Anglia, The North & Scotland. Just the other day I was wondering why the club couldn't find somewhere in Liverpool to train.

Derby is where Rolls Royce makes aero engines, surely you have heard of them?

I've heard of Rolls Royce yes. No idea they made engines in Derby though.

I admit I'm not the sharpest with directions. I still use a Sat Nav to get to my mums house. On motorways I need a Sat Nav for every journey because I tend to miss exits or forget to take them.

By the way Andre is a super player, thanks.

Considering we resorted to Jon Flanagan at the Emirates, loaning Andre out looks more curious.

I understand Liverpool are after our home bred player Will Hughes, he will be captain of England within 5 years. He is a truly fantastic footballer.

I've never seen Hughes play but I've heard Brendan & Co are interested. The Premier League is such a step up we'd really have no clue how he'd do. Jordan Henderson was an England U21 regular with top flight experience, yet it's taken him a couple of years to get into any sort of rhythm.

Possibly Wisdom's loan is to soften the ground for a Hughes bid later.

Skezza, would you like to tell us why it isn't quite as straightforward as that?

Because car manufacturers have stopped licensing major brand Nav software to provide RT routing for their vehicles. Instead, they now opt to develop their own in-house sat nav package via their own software development team, it's a good cost cutting measure and they've been doing it for about 10-15 years.

The problem is, when you give a development team a task of building a software package in 18 months to do a similar job to that of a more 'mature' competitor, you have no chance of achieving that goal.
Do you really expect a software development team of, uhmmm, anywhere between 20-50 (at the very most) engineers to develop a Sat Nav package that can compete with Garmin, TomTom, iGo etc? No, and Porsche, VW, Land Rover, Merc, are all developing their own in-house packages that are literally dreadful compared to the dedicated software. Those pacages I've mentioned have been developed over a number of years. They have 100's of developers working everyday. They'll use heuristic algorithms that have literally been tweaked and tweaked and tweaked, to the point they are incredibly accurate. They will not only come up with the best route distance, speed wise, but they'll also factor in features such as country lanes, motorways, etc, all things not available on the in-house software.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, Andre Wisdom will buy a new Porsche, and anyone who can afford one, probably wouldn't be too bothered if this happened to them, but if it was me buying my own Porsche, I would ask for one with no in-car system (apart from the base model perhaps) and then I'd replace it with an unlocked unit running Windows CE 6, at which point I could access all of the major packages I've talked about: iGo being my favourite.

It's not because the in car SatNav is operated through a large screen which cannot be stolen and also fulfillls a wide range of other functions with car car.

The stand alone unit is too small for me, leaves marks on the windscreen, can be stolen or forgotten and can injure you in an accident.

However the best SatNav I have used is Waze and when we get universal in car internet operated through a large built in screen we will all be happy.

Got a Garmin, had it about 4 years now, cost £90 from Halfords. It will accept full post code and national grid coordinate entry which is essential out of major towns and cites since post codes can cover a huge area. National Grid coords are easilly obtained from Streetmap for free. In all the time I have been using the thing it has taken me to exactly the address or location I have input down sensible roads and the ETA it shows has always been spot on and adjusted to your speed. It has worked all over England and into the north of Scotland.

Why anyone would want to spend huge sums of money on bult in manufacturers units or built in aftermarket units is beyond me. Most people only need them occationally when they are driving to locations they are not familiar with, a trip to the upermarket does not require a sat nav yet you see loads of people ate Tesco's with them on the windscreen.

The mark on the screen from the sucker is easily sorted, clean the screen.

Would love to try one of the smart phone apps but my phone is only semi smart (Symbian) thus no such apps available.

My new car had Sat Nav as a £500 special offer option instead on the regular £2000 which also included LED lights and some other useless bits and pieces. Did I bother, of course not when a new Garmin better than mine is only £80 now.

Edited by skidpan on 14/11/2013 at 16:55