In message , Roger Chapman
writes
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.


We have a cheapy Myguide Satnav, it seems to also like doing this,
though I imagine they all do it to a certain extent, depending on the
weighting given. It also seems rather pessimistic on Motorways.

I don't know if fancier ones allow it, but some way of tweaking the the
way it chooses the roads would be useful. And a way to learn over time
how long you take over certain types of roads.

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.

Ditto, doesn't all the mapping for these things come from a couple of
companies (Navteq and someone else?), so I guess the same problems will
occur with multiple manufacturers.
--
Chris French