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My Boss Asked About The Tomtom....


Delaypat

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First of all TomTom covers a lot of products (it's like saying "Garmin").

 

There is the TomTom Navigator "box", which is a pretty decent piece of hardware, and runs a software very similar to the PocketPC TomTom software. The biggest selling point against the similar Garmin units is the inertial dead-reckoning.

 

As far as the software itself is concerned, TomTom is pretty good. It has one of prettiest 3D displays, the voice navigation is easy to understand and the UI is truly touch-friendly. The box has plenty of horsepower, so zooming and scrolling is very responsive.

 

The software was the first to support real-time traffic data as well as POI alerts (speed cameras). Since these features have been available for a long time, there are many supporting tools and freely available databases of all kinds.

 

The reason I would hesitate to recommend the US version is that the Teleatlas maps that come with it are suprisingly horrible for some areas. For example, in Salt Lake City, TomTom will advise you to "keep left" at every 2 lane highway exit, and will issue 2 or 3 completely ridiculous directions when highways join and/or part.

 

The Navtech-based units (pretty much every hardware and software other than TomTom) have more sensible voice prompting. (Actually, the navtech map format itself is inferior -- it is too simple to properly describe some of the more unusual traffic situations. However, the Navtech data itself is better than the Teleatlas data.)

 

All in all, he should check out some other options and tread wisely. There are plenty of competing units at wildly varying price points, so he has to do at least some research to find out what he wants. If at all possible, he should go with a Sirf III based unit if he frequents downtown areas.

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