970T - to buy or not to buy - that is the question.

[Inkent]

Firstly - I'm a newbie here but have learnt a lot from your posts over the last few weeks. Thanks in advance for your help.

I was about to order a 970T when I began to see the dreaded 'discontinued' word across various sites. And then I found this forum.
So my question is: what now? I think there are 3 elements - maps, traffic info, and camera info (and possibly POI).
When VM cease to support these units, will we be able to download up-to-date maps from other sources? Similarly for traffic, although I assume that will continue. Is the camera info on the pocketgps site comparable with VM's? In short - is it worth still buying a 970T?

The alternative is going for a different brand. It's a jungle out there and it took me ages to find the 970T which seemed to do everything I needed. Are there any other similar solutions which keep the annual costs down to a reasonable level?

Many thanks

[EddyDC]

Since VM is at a dead end, I wouldn't put any money in it.

[perussell]

I had an X 970T for about 5 months and was generally very pleased with it, it was good quality, the RDS TMC seemed to work better than on many other units (due to the paddle antenna) and as somebody who likes to do some touring I found the Michelin guides very useful. I don't think anybody's speed camera d/base betters that of PGPSW though the VM cameras would show up with the speed limit so you were never in any doubt. Topping everything off was(is?) the outstanding support we all received from Stu (Deepfour).

That said, and having learned many years ago that big organisations do not generally support discontinued products I jumped ship and flogged my unit on e-Bay earlier this year.

Going against all my previous utterances I replaced it with a Tomtom 720 which I got for a fantastic price in an online sale - lets just say the "cost to change" was no more than £55 between the VM and the new unit.

I didn't bother with the T version of the 720 since I have learned not to trust the RDS-TMC service (in reception terms) so I have now subscribed to TomTom Traffic via GPRS and get a solid signal all the time. Yes, it costs £29 per year but the non T version is typically £50 less than the TMC enabled TT720, download costs via GPRS are pennies and it actually works! I also find the features and the intuitive navigation through the menus extremely good. With text to speech and voice recognition not to mention all the other usual features that a top end sat nav comes with these days it is a superb little piece of kit.

TT customer service leaves something to be desired but there is more than enough help in these pages to overcome most problems. That said my unit has been 100% reliable (so far )

[Flossie15]

It depends what you want from a PND. I got my 970 on the recommendation of someone, and I was very impressed by what it does, especially in terms of synching with the PC etc.

I traded my old TomTom 910 in which I found far to bulky and was a pain in the neck to fix to my windscreen (it fell off loads)

Being a girlie who travels a lot (and I do try to travel light!!) , it is light to transport about and fits into my laptop bag etc without too much trouble.

You will read lots of niggles about the unit on here (some more than others) but that is natural with anything IT related. I normally give anything technical 5 mins of my attention span, then if it doesn't work, I am not interested!! So far the 970 has kept my attention. :-)

The VM guides are great, as is the VM website - it has got me out of some scrapes when trying to book hotels in obscure places!

So - do you want to be the cutting edge of technology or do you want a cut price unit that will get you from A to B with some great extras on it?

Again - only my humble opinion..

[BigPerk]

Yes - I would definitely agree with Flossi15. If you have really come down to the VM as the best for you, then will you find a more suitable unit by starting over? You can see from this forum what the niggles and good points are, and you can check the other threads such as TT as well - none's perfect. The VM has a lot of very good facilities (especially if you go to the continent) which others either haven't got or which cost a lot more. Being discontinued may give you an even better bargain!

Map updates are uncertain, but they are current at present. Usually, by the time I am concerned about my maps being too out of date for MY travels, I've moved on to a new product anyway! Most annual updates aren't necessarily worth the considerable expense.

And support is set to continue for the warranty period. It's not necessarily the best, but it's certainly been much better than with my previous make. Perhaps here, though you should check the worst niggle reports carefully to make sure they are less likely to upset you.

But, as they say on BB "You Decide"
_________________
David
(Navigon 70 Live, Nuvi 360)

[Inkent]

Thanks for your thoughts. You've all made some good points & I had better get stuck in to all the specs and costs again. The value for money i.e. features vs costs was quite appealing on the VM.

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