Car Navigation Units

[Whisper]

Heard on the radio to-day that new National Traffic Laws will make VDU's (Visual Display Units) illegal if they can be viewed by the driver !!!
Argument is that Navman style GPs units are VDU's.
Argument against is that they are 'drivers aids' and therefore exempt from the new laws.
Might be worthwhile waiting for the dust to settle on this one before spending money.
Interesting law when you consider that some upmarket vehicles come with them as standard equipment.

[kjd]

tom toms can turn the screen off and just have audio instructions.

[shane]

Guys i have a Uniden and find it very good.

It can be set to quickest or shortest.

Quickest will take you via mainroads and highways with the theory being you will have better traffic conditions avoiding bad interesctions and slow speed limits etc.

The shortest will take you the most direct route it can fine. I tend to prefer this as a lot of the places i have to go are futher away from main roads than i would like.

But it works very well and has never let me down.
cheers,
Shane

[Blackpete]

Hi all, does the Tom Tom and Uniden units say the street name as well as the distance to turn Eg; "turn left in 300 meters at Jones Street" as opposed to "turn left in 300 meters".

I have been told that the Garmin units are the only ones that have this "street by street" directions.

Pete.

[kjd]

The tomtom 910 does mate but not the 710!

[shane]

Nar mate it has the street name on the screen but only gives the directions with voice.
cheers,
Shane

[malcolm]

Blackpete, this is why GPS Oz only sold the "Co Pilot" software units. They said "turn left at Jones St in 300m". The "voice" was "Rodger". A pompus English snob voice that you really had to listen to, to understand his accent. A software upgrade was a sexy womens voice.
But---I'm talking a couple of years ago--who knows what's out there now!
Malcolm

[Blackpete]

Morning all,
YYYyaun, just got back from Brisbane this morning (1230) and the kids got me out of bed at 0630 to see what I had got for them, back to bed soon.

Re the nav units, my uncle gave me a Mio-C310 as a birthday present while I was there, it was a great help getting me into & around Brissy. I went to the gun show at the show grounds and to the Belmont Range with no trouble from West of Ipswich. The only problem was the unit shit it self at Rocky on the way home yesterday; not to worry, I'll take it back to Hardly Normal today for a warrentee claim.

YYYyaun, good night.

Pete.

[kickinback]

Just used a tomtom one xl in the work car and found it VERY accurate and useful. The biggest test was when it told us to do a u turn in 500 meters. We looked at each other and asked the same question....will we be able to do a u turn at the place indicated? Yes we could. Personally i was impressed with the unit.

Shame it didnt tell me that the dickhead behind me at the lights wasnt goint to stop and ploughed me into the mercedes in front.......

[GriMo]

Just used a tomtom one xl in the work car and found it VERY accurate and useful. The biggest test was when it told us to do a u turn in 500 meters. We looked at each other and asked the same question....will we be able to do a u turn at the place indicated? Yes we could. Personally i was impressed with the unit.

Shame it didnt tell me that the dickhead behind me at the lights wasnt goint to stop and ploughed me into the mercedes in front.......

Hey mate, unlucky about the accident.

Having been the driver with pustys tomtom on quite a few ebay runs i can vouch for their quality and accuracy. Im also the first to flip my lid when it gives dodge instructions. Hasnt really lead me astray bar one time where it instructed me to chuck a u turn in the middle of the pacific highway.

All in all a good unit, and boy does it save some time stuffing around if you miss a turn

[Blackpete]

Evening all,
just an up date on the Mio; when i turned it on after the Brissy trip it seemed to reset it self OK so i haven't bothered about taking it back.

One thing i did find out on the way up was you couldn't simply nominate a town, you had to put in a street name as well, bit hard when you haven't been to that town before. I got around it by hitting a letter (usualy 'J') and that gave me a list of street names in the town i wanted to go through, then I just picked one that looked good, but be careful doing this as i managed to pick a street 10 miles out of a town and on the wrong side of where i needed to be , i started to check the road signs a bit more after that.

I also found out that you have to be at a place to list it as a POI (point of intrest), i supose it needs the actual cordinates to record the POI.

I'll post more info on the unit as time goes and I use it some more.

Pete.

[steven]

Pete,

It all comes down to reading the instructions. I have the Navman Pin 570 which is the PDA version which now has a 1gig memory card. It plays music, movies, games has microsoft excel just like a mini computer. It has save my arse more then once but comes down to setting it up prior to your trip, saves a lot of detours.
Mine can be set up for a town but will take you to the town main drag usually, so it is a good idea to put in a street name if possible or set it up as a favorite when you find your destination. They are not perfect and never will be so you need to read the instructions 3 times and generally play with it till you know it inside out.

Steve

[Blackpete]

Hi Steve,
mate all i can say is "yep i'll agree with that", my trouble is i don't follow directions well, but, i know with time and playing with the unit i'll get there, i'd just love to have a system where i can simply say what i want and have it promply bring up an answer. I spose it won't be to far away.

Pete.

[prodj1000@hotmail.com]

ive got a navman520, there very handy, they occasionally get lost but over all, very good purchase