Review by John Rowe for TomTom Navigator 5 System with Maps of the US and Canada for Compatible PDAs
Rating:
Why pay for another small computer with a touchscreen when you already have one? The TomTom Navigator 5 with its CDs of maps and software is less than half the price of an all-in-one unit. One advantage over the all-in-ones is that you can put the Navigator way out on your car’s dash to receive a good signal while keeping the PDA’s screen closer to you (or even with someone in the back seat). In my looking around, it appeared that TomTom is one of the better GPS software companies. Their software was definitely easy for me to figure out. I paired the Navigator GPS receiver (about the size of a double-thick iPod nano) with my Treo on a recent trip to New York. It worked great.

MY EXPERIENCE SETTING IT UP: To set it up you need to load the software onto your PDA, visit the TomTom site, and enter in some passwords. Then it’s time to load the map(s) you need. Warning: one state can take 50 MB or more (make sure you have room on your PDA’s expansion card or buy a bigger one). Loading maps for NY, CT and MA totaled about 75 MB. Transferring that much info to your PDA takes about 10 minutes. Then it’s time to register the maps which requires going back to the TomTom website.

Getting into the software, I went to the “Points of Interest” option, chose “Airports”, selected Laguardia Airport, and saved it as a favorite. I then went to the “Hotels”, selected the one I was staying at and saved it as “home”. It got me right to the hotel with only one confusing direction near the end of the trip. While at the hotel, I found that I needed to go to a grocery store. I found one in the “Stores” portion of “Points of Interest” and it navigated me to it perfectly.

THINGS I LEARNED:

1) You need to be out in the open for the GPS to pick up satellite signals (don’t try to use it inside or in a parking garage).

2) Try it out around town before you try it on a trip so you know it works and to get a better idea of how far say “800 yards” is. The voice will often tell you something like, “turn right in 800 yards” and I didn’t have a good feel for how far that was when I first began using it.

3) It will tell you when to turn, when to stay right, and when to veer left, etc. But it doesn’t speak street names (although the display does SHOW the street name of the next street you need to take).

4) The only power adapter included is for a cigarette lighter.

5) An in-car PDA holder with windshield suction cup or vent attachment is a necessity.

6) If you have a combination PDA/Phone, you may want to turn the phone off while using the GPS. I got a call in the middle of driving. If a turn had been coming up, I would have missed it.

7) If you get lost, there’s nothing like a paper map that allows you to see the big picture (rather than a 3″ x 3″ screen).

Listening to your directions spoken with optional British and Australian accents is a “trip”.

All in all, I am very pleased with my purchase and will take the Navigator 5 with me on all my future trips.

Review by S. Nay for TomTom Navigator 5 System with Maps of the US and Canada for Compatible PDAs
Rating:
Update: I wrote the review below based on my experiences with TomTom Navigator for Palm, which was version 4. I’ve seen v5 in operation but have not used it myself. From what I saw, TomTom has resolved some of the issues that I mentioned, but there was no way to test for signal problems.

*****

I’ve owned TomTom Navigator for my PDA for a while now, and I just can’t recommend it. There are many things to like, but the problems with the software outweigh the good. A couple of good features:

+ Nice 3D map view.

+ Interface desiged for fingers, not a stylus.

But the main problem:

- Sometimes it just refuses to see the GPS signal, which means it’s no good at all. I have a wired GPS antenna, so it’s not a bluetooth problem. It could be working fine, then I’ll switch to the address book to look up a phone number and then switch back to Navigator, and it says it can’t find the GPS signal. It had no trouble finding it 30 seconds before, and nothing has changed, but it will not find it no matter how long I wait. I’ve tried to work with TomTom on this and they replaced my cradle and gave me some setup steps to try, but the problem is still there. If a GPS device can’t find the signal, all those pretty maps are worthless. I’d say that it works at least 90% of the time, but that 10% is a killer, especially when you’re on a trip to an unfamiliar city and you need to find your way back to the airport in time for your flight.

A few design problems:

- The “Major Roads of the USA” map is just roads; it has no POI information. So if you’re on a long trip, you have to switch maps to find a hotel or restaurant.

- Map groupings are limited, so you have to load individual states or predefined groups. You can’t plan a long trip and load just the states for that trip in one installation.

- Maps don’t switch automatically. For example, if you’re in Massachusetts and you drive to New York and you have both maps loaded, it won’t switch to the NY map automatically.

- POIs don’t have any useful information, such as addresses and phone numbers. You can’t see an address for a POI even though the Navigator obviously knows it. And there are no phone numbers that might let you call a restaurant or hotel and make a reservation.

- You can’t pick a POI for another location. If you’re in city A and you are driving to city B and you want to have dinner there, you can’t search for restaurants in city B. All POI searches are based on your current location.

- POI list doesn’t tell you enough. For example, supposed you want to find a McDonalds. (I don’t know why you would, but it works for the illustration.) So you go to the Restaurant POI list and you type in “mcd” and you see a list of McDonalds restaurants, and their distance from your current location. But that’s all. Some other GPS systems at least tell you which direction, which is useful to prevent you from selecting one that you passed or that is completely out of your way. The list could also tell you what city, again to help you select one that is on your route.

Review by HS for TomTom Navigator 5 System with Maps of the US and Canada for Compatible PDAs
Rating:
TomTom Software Review!

Pros: Being able to have it integrated on the Smart Phone

Cons: Inaccurate Maps (we are talking miles not feet!), Difficult of use, cumbersome menus, lack of POI’s, Wrong POI locations, crashes often and the list goes on….

Review:

This software should be labeled a beta software until the company works out all its problems, it should be never compared to Garmin or Magellan, I owned both and it does not even come close.

I will start with the pros since it will take the least time to mention.

Pros: Convenience of having a Navigation loaded on your phone, the GPS receiver can be left in the vehicle except when you are hiking for example.

Cons:

Maps:

The inaccuracy of the Maps are incredible and can lead you to a wrong place or miss a free way exit.

Maps are out dated; it did not show streets that have been updated on all map search engines 18 month prior.

You can not click and pan the maps to see the route ahead while on route.

Crashes often, about once every 2~3 days.

You would expect to be able to easily access your address book or contacts to navigate to a saved address; right? Not with TomTom, you have to exit the application and open another application called tomtom contacts there you can select a name and from the pull down click on navigate to address, it would then open the main navi software and show you the route, Oh but if for some reason you did not have your satellite locked yet, then you will have to exit out and do the same thing all over again! I think you agree that this is a bit cumbersome.

Sync

It gives data base errors of “WARNING: Possible database overwrite problem….”, after contacting the customer service they said that it is a known problem! And nothing can be done???!!! So now every time I sync I have to ignore the warning message so other problems might go unnoticed thanks to the smart developers at TomTom.

POI (Points of Interest):

Again incomplete, inaccurate and difficult to use. For example if you are looking for a certain store and the search returns 6 and let us say the first 3 are approximately 3mi from where you are, you will not be able to select each one to further know more info – all you can do is pick one to get the directions to.

SD card:

Every time you insert the SD card into your PDA, the TomTom application will have start, and No, this is not an option you can turn off.

Customer Service:

Not very helpful, not knowledgeable about their products or offers and take long time to answer questions or concerns.

I am disappointed at the product which could have been an incredible for the convenience, I hope that the people involved in making decisions for the company go out and buy some different Navigation units and see how they can improve their product.

Thanks for your time reading my review!