On Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:13:41 +0000, Lobster
wrote:

On 07/11/2010 20:25, Lawrence wrote:
Thought I'd just tell you about "my repair" at TomTom.

Ah, TomTom.

We've had one for sveral years, and it's always worked very well except
for one occasion. Guess which one that was?

Yes, it was the time we went on holiday to Italy (by plane), and had
organised a hire car midway through to transport us from Venice to the
centre of Rome. Having checked we had up-to-date maps on the satnav I
packed it without a second thought, only to find to my horror that for
some bizarre reason, it wouldn't take any power from the hire car and
didn't work at all.

Never did find out the reason - the TomTom was fine at home when we got
back - but boy did I enjoy that drive through the Rome rush hour. Not.

If there is no intention of stopping on the way, then Venice to Rome
is a much easier, quicker and less stressful journey, especially at
the Rome end, by train rather than driving. Around 3.5 - 4 hours door
to door, I've not driven it in less than about 6 hours.

I don't have any need to use one in the UK, but sat navs have
transformed my driving abroad, there was an ongoing police operation
(with road blocks) in Italy about five years ago which we got caught
up in. We had no real idea of precisely where we were as it was the
usual case of some sense of direction, following the road signs out of
the city with the aid of the satnav along for the ride (no detailed
city maps were to hand)

Simply ignoring the original planned route, and choosing an avoiding
route of roughly similar direction by a finger in the air with the aid
of the sun got a new route recalculated by the Tom Tom in seconds, we
repeated the exercise then when we ran into yet another road block,
the Tom Tom recognised that a certain area of the city was now not to
be used and we quickly had a route via a heap of backroads out of the
city.

There were no diversion signs and even with a detailed street map it
could have taken us a long time to navigate round the obstructions.

That the Tom Tom works in narrow streets with tall buildings either
side is staggering. The relatively new at that time Garmin handheld
GPS I use as backup when sailing is truly hopeless on land, either in
streets or under tree cover.



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