My brother-in-law is an HGV driver. He's just come over to the UK to start working here and he doesn't really know his way around the rounds. He could manage with maps, he did around Eastern Europe, but he wants to make a good impression with his new employers.
So he went out and bought a TomTom GO 300, and who was I to stop him? Obviously I had to test it for him, just to make sure it worked, you know how it is.
I'm very very impressed. It's very, very easy to use; totally multi-lingual and utterly cool. The 3D view is perfect – the road you're on just sort of continues ahead onto the screen which shows your position at just the right angle. There's something very cool about cruising around a junction at night (there's a gentle night vision colour scheme, natch) watching your arrow zoom down the road – of course I was watching very carefully as I was driving (cough).
It's truly simple, just enter your destination postcode and you're off. If you get lost, which I tried intentionally a number of times, and the TomTom doesn't get flustered. It recalculates your route and just tells you to take the next appropriate turning – there are no demands to make immediate U-turns nor does the polite person inside give up in exasperation.
I love that it's so portable, easy to fit in the car and it shows where the nearest petrol stations are! I'm always looking for a pit stop with only fumes in my tank.
The TomTom can also be connected with a GPRS mobile for live traffic and weather info, I haven't tried that but it sounds good. You can also update and expand the the TomTom through its USB link, or through the SD card for storage. My brother-in-law wanted to load up a Polish voice on the TomTom so I dutily fired up my PowerBook. I wasn't expecting much joy, every other device like this has never worked with a Mac straight up – I've always had to find a hack or give up.
But lo and behold the little beauty worked like a dream, mounting on my Desktop like any other storage device. Wonderful.
Can honestly say that this gadget is very close to being perfect. Sure a bigger screen, longer battery life and all that would be nice. But really at this price point I couldn't expect anything more.
The incredibly positive reviews on Amazon are justified.
Jason Kitcat 