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Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 532 Location: Warwick, UK
Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 6:26 pm Post subject:
Sniff wrote:
I bought my GO in Germany, for 649 Euros. It came with the maps of Germany, Austria/Switzerland/Alps, and the MRE. Each of those is available for 149 Euros, so that's 447 Euros worth of maps. That means I paid 202 Euros for my GO (or about 143 GBP).
Yes, but these maps didn't all come on SDs. I imagine you had one SD card - probably 128 or maybe 256MB - and the rest on CD. If so, your logic is severely flawed! [Even so, it's a better deal than you can get in the UK. I paid 412 GBP (about 582 Euros) for TTG with just UK on SD + MRE on CD].
In my view, TomTom's SD cards are grossly overpriced when you consider that you can get detailed maps for the whole of Europe on CDs for a similar price to a single country on SD. So it's much cheaper to get the CDs and buy your own blank SDs - which you can get for peanuts these days.
Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 532 Location: Warwick, UK
Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 6:44 pm Post subject:
Sniff wrote:
I agree with you that MRE might well not meet your needs as well as it could. But it meets my needs pretty much perfectly. And I should imagine it meets the needs of many people in mainland Europe who have a requirement for navigating through one or more countires to get to their destination. Why should TomTom change the Major Roads of Europe map, and alienate that European user base, to meet your needs?
I totally fail to see why making it more useful to one group of users needs to be to the detriment of any other group.
Judging by recent sales in the UK - where TTG has become this year's "must have" gizmo - I imagine that the UK market is quite important to TomTom. My guess is that the ability to add third-party POIs - such as speed, sorry safety, sorry revenue cameras - was largely UK-driven. Now that it's taking off in North America, you can be sure that if they have any special requirements, they'll be implemented PDQ!
The irony of all this is that, if MRE was really just major roads (= motorways and trunk roads in UK) I would accepted it purely for the purpose for which you use it. But it's already much more than this - since it contains a whole network of minor roads, and does 99% of what I want for occasional forays into other countries. All I need is a few more place names.
[Incidentally, I suspect that there's precious little in the way of motorway service areas included. I would have thought that even you would have needed these for your inter-country trips?]
Joined: Nov 02, 2004 Posts: 123 Location: Munich, Germany
Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 7:41 pm Post subject:
You're right, in that the SD version of the maps are ridiculously priced in comparison to the CDs and a few blank SD cards. I was just using TomTom's prices to try and make a humourous comment on the value of my GO. Looks like I failed in the humour part.
Anyway, no more (or less?) amusing is watching people bid on Ebay today for the European CD maps with current price around 128 GBP. when Amazon sells it for around 105 GBP with free postage!
Regarding MRE, I guess we will just have to differ in our opinions. I never actually said that doing what you wish would make MRE less useful to European users, but I am 100% certain that it would either (a) make the GO package more expensive or (b) make TomTom not bundle MRE with the GO package. Personally neither of those are very appealing to friends I know looking to buy one.
And you're wrong in your assumption about POIs. There's a very active GO user base in Germany, and France, and many other European countries. They just don't necessarily want the same things as the UK users, for some of the reasons I've tried to explain. I guess the problem for TomTom is satisfying all those people without alienating any.
Regarding motorway service stations...again, not really the same here. Most places on the autobahn are for getting petrol, not food, so maybe they appear as petrol stations in the POI (not sure, I haven't checked)?
Anyway, a fun discussion. I accept your point about more map detail in the MRE would make it more useful. I hope you accept my point about UK requirements not necessarily being welcomed by everyone.
Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 532 Location: Warwick, UK
Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 8:04 pm Post subject:
Sniff wrote:
Regarding motorway service stations...again, not really the same here. Most places on the autobahn are for getting petrol, not food, so maybe they appear as petrol stations in the POI (not sure, I haven't checked)?.
As far as I can see, there aren't *any* POIs - of any sort - in MRE.
Sniff wrote:
Anyway, a fun discussion. I accept your point about more map detail in the MRE would make it more useful. I hope you accept my point about UK requirements not necessarily being welcomed by everyone.
Yes, let's call it quits!
I'm about to start a new thread on a related subject. Watch this space!
Joined: 17/05/2003 02:26:21 Posts: 3747 Location: Bedfordshire, UK
Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 8:25 pm Post subject:
I don't think any releases of MRE have POI information or TMC information (so they can't be used with TomTom Traffic). That's certainly my recollection of the MRE version in TomTom Navigator 3.
Meanwhile, my congratulations to you all for debating so intelligently.
Joined: Dec 08, 2004 Posts: 3 Location: Hampshire, UK
Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 11:50 pm Post subject:
I'm so relieved to find a discussion on this MRE 'no towns' issue. It has been anooying me for some time. I posted a similar request on the Palm TT forum, but the complete lack of response made me think I'd installed the maps wrongly.
Sniff, you say that MRE works perfectly fine for you, but I can only assume you're not trying to get to anywhere other than Europe's largest cities (London, Paris, Birmingham etc). Example: My problem is I want to get to BLOIS (A large town in the Loire Valley, France), but MRE has never heard of it, even though there's a very good selection of roads in and radiating out from it. So I have to agree largely with rkm-hm that this product is (imo) largely worthless without town names and probably just a marketing taster for the full maps. Without buying the full maps, for me, the only way forward with MRE is to add the towns as POIs, an excellent suggestion.
Joined: Nov 02, 2004 Posts: 123 Location: Munich, Germany
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 10:28 am Post subject:
GrumpyOldMan wrote:
Sniff, you say that MRE works perfectly fine for you, but I can only assume you're not trying to get to anywhere other than Europe's largest cities (London, Paris, Birmingham etc). Example: My problem is I want to get to BLOIS (A large town in the Loire Valley, France), but MRE has never heard of it, even though there's a very good selection of roads in and radiating out from it. So I have to agree largely with rkm-hm that this product is (imo) largely worthless without town names and probably just a marketing taster for the full maps. Without buying the full maps, for me, the only way forward with MRE is to add the towns as POIs, an excellent suggestion.
Grumpy, I guess that's the rub...I was (still am!) viewing MRE as being the GO equivalent of one of those maps that shows only the motorways. As such it can only be used to navigate through countries on these roads. As soon as you get off the motorways, GO just shows you in empty space. That's when you need to load up a country specific map.
Rkm-hm viewed the MRE like you do, I think, as an almost-there-but-not-quite European-wide map which you could use to avoid loading up different maps each time you crossed a border.
Like I said, for what I want/need, MRE is perfect.
Joined: Nov 02, 2004 Posts: 123 Location: Munich, Germany
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 10:32 am Post subject:
GrumpyOldMan wrote:
Without buying the full maps, for me, the only way forward with MRE is to add the towns as POIs, an excellent suggestion.
One more thing...if the town you want is sufficienty far from what MRE considers a major road that you do appear in empty space, you will NOT be able to add it as a POI. All you get when you try to add a POI (or a favourite) then GO will simply respond with something like "No navigable GPS position" and refuse to add it.
That is true also of the country specific maps. I tried to add my workplace as a GPS position when I was stationary in the carpark. I was only maybe 100 yards away from the road, but still GO would not add it.
So, do not assume GO will let you add Blois as a POI...
Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 532 Location: Warwick, UK
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 10:57 am Post subject:
Sniff wrote:
[
One more thing...if the town you want is sufficienty far from what MRE considers a major road that you do appear in empty space, you will NOT be able to add it as a POI.
So, do not assume GO will let you add Blois as a POI...
But GrumpyOldMan DID say, "My problem is I want to get to BLOIS (A large town in the Loire Valley, France), but MRE has never heard of it, even though there's a very good selection of roads in and radiating out from it."
So the roads ARE there - it's just that the town name is missing, so it IS feasible to add a POI.
As I have said before (as nausium!) MRE is MUCH MORE than major roads, and includes a large number of minor roads. If only it had place names . . .
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