On 08/11/2010 07:15, Bill wrote:
I've had "support" experience over the last few years with Magellan,
Garmin and recently TomTom.

Magellan took ages to tell me to get lost.

Garmin was helpful and competent.

I have likewise had excellent help from Garmin for a hand held GPS. For
that reason (and the fact that the Garmin was the only equipment to take
grid references) I bought a Garmin sat-nav for my car. Unfortunately the
route finding abilities of the Garmin left much to be desired - the
basic problem being that it was wildly over optimistic (by a factor of
two or more) about what was possible on single track roads leading to
endless 'short cuts' that took considerably longer than sticking to
classified roads would have. The timing of the directions also left much
to be desired.

I eventually junked the Garmin and bought a TomTom which is much better
in almost every aspect. However it, like the Garmin before it, has
thousands of junctions coded with the wrong priority and also one or
very odd quirks such as advising keeping right to avoid driving into a
bog standard roadside lay-by on the A66. But what really gets my goat
about TomTom is the £26 or so that Halfords (and others) want for the
swan-neck mount for deep windscreens. OLh yes, and using lat/long for
out of the way places is a bit of a pain.