New Tom Tom Go user Some issues. Feedback?

markop · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 05, 2005 Posts: 2

Hello,
I have recently purchased a Tom Tom Go which I am generally pleased with however I have some issues with it some of which I think more serious than others.
Below is the the slightly modified text of an e-mail I sent to Tom Tom for comment, what do other users on this forum think to my queries?

Quote:
"Hello,
I bought a Tom Tom Go yesterday which I am generally pleasaed with.

there are however 2 or 3 seemingly small but significant issues which are quite important to me and could prove useful more generally on subsequent firmware updates.

The most important issue with me is the inability for the Go system to plot a route to a general location such as a town or village without knowing the full address. I shall give an example. Someone I know lives in a small village in Northumberland. I only know his address as 'Dancing Hall' in the village and then the postcode. When I try to plot a route to Callaly, the Tom Tom software recognises Callaly as a location, all fine and good, but I am then prompted to provide a street and house number which I can't because either they dont exist or I dont know them. Tom Tom then gives me a list of roads or streets in alphabetical order which often dont bear any relation to the geographical location I want, (in the instance of Callaly for example the road it lists first takes me to a location in Blyth which is a good 25 or 30 miles from where I want to be). I think the inability to locate to a town or village without the need to imput a full address is quite a serious issue and was almost a deal breaker.

My second issue is whether it would be possible to set up the preferences to let Tom Tom know whether the user is walking or in a car, because often, the software assumes that the user is driving and will take you around a sometimes tortuous route so as to avoid one way systems etc which is not an issue for pedestrians.

Finally, being able to change the input keyboard to a qwerty layout would make life much easier.

Your comments on my suggestions would be much appreciated.

thanks,

Mark Pinder"

Pocketgps · Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 3:46 pm Post subject:

Hello Mark

I find your comments quite unusual,

rkm_hm · Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 3:55 pm Post subject:

The first issue isn't actually an issue! You CAN navigate to a town. When it asks for street, type in the town name again. It will show a liittle church icon for the town centre. Select that. Sorted!

Walking is more difficult. Something similar has been discussed in the past in relation to cross-country hiking and/or off-roading with a vehicle. To do either of these would require a lot of software development, and deviate from its primary focus of being for navigation in a vehicle on roads. Extensions of this sort are not impossible, but I wouldn't hold your breath!

Other people have also asked for a qwerty keyboard. Again, not impossible - but not as straightforward as you might suppose because the so called "qwerty" layout differs fom country to country - so there would have to be lots of options. Non-Brits already complain that it doesn't do accented characters! I guess that we'll probably have to get used to the alpha layout.

Roger

markop · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 05, 2005 Posts: 2

Thanks for the replies chaps. the info about putting the town/city into the address field again was most helpful and clears up the only real issue I had with the unit.
This info was probably available somewhere in the instructions, but I couldn't see it nor on the online support.
My terminology about this being a 'dealbreaker' was probably inaccurate as I had already purches the TomTom before this possible issue was spotted.
Cheers.

jdatkinson · Regular Visitor Joined: Oct 29, 2004 Posts: 63

It's been said elsewhere by far more knowledgeable people than me that the Go, and many other units designed for in car navigation, have software that "snaps" your location to the nearest road on the assumption that you are driving (a not unreasonable assumption for a gadget designed primarily for in car use). Therefore, if you take it off road or walking, it may not function in a terribly predictable manner as it simply isn't programmed to cope with the user deviating from roads. Presumably, the hand held GPS devices are designed and programmed with walking / off road use in mind so do not suffer from this problem.

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