Donkey Alert

[pie691]

Please be gentle.

I'm not massively techie, in fact a bit of a donkey, but I'm about to buy a PDA - eventually.

I also want one that will work with GPS and TomTom seems to get the nod after my trawl through forums such as these.



Couple of newbie points though:



1) Will the new Sony PDA's work with Tomtom, I'm embarrassingly a bit hazy on this, but I do know they are Palm compatable.



2) What exactly do I get with the Tomtom navigator?

Again Im bamboozled, I thought it came with everything except the interface cable but why then do I see Tomtom route planners sold seperately?



3) Does anybody have experience of things like the GPS speed camera alarm I have heard of? Basically a free standing one like Road Angel would, I hope, be updated regularly with telporary and mobile cameras - what about the PDA addon ones?



4) Anything else I should know?

Im receptive to any info, especially if a SOny is not compatable, I have a little brand loyalty and a spare memory stick to start but no massive compulsion to go Sony.



Thanks in advance



p

[Dave]

1) Not with Navigator no, the Sony CLIE's use a Palm OS, you could get RoutePlanner or CityMaps but if you want true street routing then I would strongly suggest Navigator.



2) There's two packages, the software only setup which includes maps for one country, and there's the hardware setup which will give you an in-car GPS Receiver plugged into the accessory/cig socket in-car. See our Bundles Review Menus for TomTom Navigator and other products, there's also a designation if these will work on the Palm or Pocket PC also which should help. You can then click into each review and read the full review. If you just want to look at software and maps check out our GPS Software Menus



3) There are dedicated speed camera detection systems using GPS or Radar, check out our Speed Camera Detector Menus for hardware devices, or our Software Speed Camera Systems. If you want to run a software based one, most only integrate into TomTom Navigator, so a Pocket PC setup would be required for this.



4) Palm OS is okay, but one thing you have to realise is that GPS software really hasn't taken off massively on the Palm OS. It's getting there, but slowly. The real breakthrough has been on the Pocket PC market (eg Microsoft Windows CE), so to get the best system you would probably be better going for a Pocket PC. Having said that, the systems are much more expensive, and you could be looking up to or beyond £500 for an all-inclusive Pocket PC, GPS Hardware, software and maps system.

[pie691]

Dave



Thanks. Im now thinking of going for a seperate GPS receiver but using Tomtom software.



One thing Im not sure about...

The navigator is on sale for around 120 quid but I can see "city maps" advertised for about 40.



Why do I need to buy the city maps seperately?



thanks

[Darren]

You don't. City Maps and Route Planner were around long before Navigator, in fact they were around before GPS were common! Route Planner was a product for inter-city journey planning and had no inner city detail and CityMaps was for routing in towns and cities and was no use for inter-city planning. Navigator contains all the detail that City Maps and Route Planner had combined in one product with the additions of voice, route re-calculation etc.



So you don't need City Maps
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Darren Griffin

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