clever stuff.

It really does need speed limit data though, no point just going on categories. Tomtom's speed profiles are time-sensitive though, and are specifically intended to help beat rush-hour traffic and school run stuff once the profiles build, so if the data collected is good and used well, it could be quite a good system. Shame it's all tied up in proprietary gear.

I don't know how they work out the categories, but I'd assumed that a road with a 40 limit has a different category to a similar one where the national speed limit applies.

I use the Navigon program, which has speed limit data shown on screen if you want to see it, as well as programmed averages for various categories according to vehicle type. It's pretty accurate for the coach over long distances, if I take the predicted time to include breaks, using the lorry speed profile. I'm just waiting to see if they've permanently dropped mapping updates before I start looking at other options. The maps were last updated about 18 months ago.

If the Tomtom maps are up to date, then maybe I could live with the program problems people refer to for the PDA version.

The simple systems have set speed limits for A roads, B roads, town roads, motorways, dual carriageways and one or two more, more capable systems have speed limit data that can be displayed on-screen but is best used in the journey time calculations, and that's enough to make tomtom (and probably yours too) far more accurate than the much simpler systems that just use road classes. Tomtom also has the useful "max speed" feature, which is actually rather useful for someone like me with several vehicles, one of which doesn't really like going at more than 55MPH on the flat, it can make a big difference to routes on longer trips, I say max speed of 45MPH and it's about spot on for journeys in the slow vehicle.

I'd suggest you download a pirate copy of tomtom and play with it, then if you travel a lot, then think about getting one of their mid to high range units. There's no substitute for playing with the apps over a prolonged period, that really shows up each one's flaws and strengths. Demos just don't do it. You do have to make allowances of course, e.g. out-of-date maps, no support, no online services, but you can solidly test the central app out. I've never tried tomtom's map updates (updates submitted by users) as I left the tomtom fold before all that came in.

Also there's nothing like a long-term test of several apps to put people's inevitable sniping at the market leader into perspective and demonstrate why the market leader is the market leader! Just a pity they're concentrating on what is most likely a vanishing niche.

I'm perfectly happy with the interface & workings of Navigon version 6. I can't even think of any minor improvements I'd like to see, apart from having it adapt to my driving style over a period. My main problem is that the maps are out of date, rapidly getting more so & Navigon's website isn't *at all* friendly unless you just want to buy the latest version, which won't work on the PDA I own. I spent *far* too much time in Ireland driving across the fields last month. I'm currently downloading a versionoff their website to see if the maps are newer than the ones I've got.

Version 7, which has been released since I last checked, needs WM5 or 6 to work, so I'd need to buy a new PDA or phone as well, which makes it an expensive prospect. I'm going to ask them if the version 7 maps will work on the version 6 software, but I'm not hopeful, as all their other maps are locked to a particular type of hardware.

Quite a few of our drivers own Tomtom (And other) units of various sorts, & while the mapping & routing functions on Tomtom are good, which is probably why they're the market leader, it seems harder to find places than it is with the Navigon. Possibly a case of what I'm used to, though. Most of them use the dedicated units. I also *hate* the landscape format display all the dedicated units seem to use. A portrait format shows the approaching road more clearly, with less space wasted showing me what I'm driving past. As for the latest ones with widescreen displays...

I do travel a lot, all over Western Europe, usually with 40 or so people behind me, so a good navigation system is fairly important.

I've seen a number of these programs in use, & the market leader is pretty good. Even so, generally, their support for non-proprietary & last year's hardware seems abysmal. What am I supposed to do with a dedicated unit that can't be updated? I doubt I could install a music or video player program on it, & with out of date maps, I doubt I could even give it away.

Now, if only Autoroute could be made to run on a PC small enough to fit on the dash, with an internal battery that would run for a complete 15 hour shift.......

In message , John Williamson writes

The AA has a vast amount of data on actual road speed, and they will fryy it to anyone who wants to plot real travel-times. It's what a great deal of UK satnav systems use.

I'm the original Luddite Ian, tariff?? no bloody way PAYG matey I have never used a phone enough to warrent a 'plan' even the phone in the truck gets little use s'only buggers wanting me to do stuff. Derek

Oh, I know the data's available, sometimes in real time, too. As always, it's a cost decision. I *could* subscribe to the live TMC feed via the system I use, but it's too expensive to make it worthwhile for me.

The mapping companies seem to all (Both? Navteq & TeleAtlas seem to be the commonest.) have their own system of classifying roads, ranging from wide, straight motorway to one step up from a footpath, which apparently aren't compatible with each other.

It's all much better than what I was doing a couple of decades ago, measuring stuff on paper maps & guessing what the road was going to be like when I finally got there. Or few years ago, printing out maps from Autoroute, praying the roadbuilders hadn't been too busy since I bought the copy.

Mine gets used *loads*, just not as a phone that's all! First thing I look for is a data tariff with something about voice and some kind of messaging service thing..

Mind you I've been using it loads today as a phone, trying to get a laptop repair sorted, but even that is as a voice over IP phone, I can even call the states for free, which was useful recently. In general most months I don't even get anywhere near my paltry 300 minutes or

Garmin Mobile is utterly woeful at finding things, particularly finding things that are near other things, e.g. if you want to find fuel stations near a customer, forget it, it's absolutely *terrible* due to a very poorly designed user interface and menu structure. This alone makes it a pile of s**te not worth any amount of money.

Tomtom is pretty good as you just find the customer then find things near the cursor. Nokia Maps is fairly poor but far better than garmin mobile (anything is better than that), but the best by far is Google Maps, although it requires an online connection. It's got by far the best database, and you can use satellite photos to help, e.g. when I was checking on the location of a DHL depot recently I could see all the vans parked up. Google Maps can save to the Nokia's location database, this is then picked up by nokia maps so that makes nokia maps the best by proxy!

I'm not decided about landscape versus protrait, I found landscape to be best for 3D navigation, and portrait best for 2D, with 2D navigation the best for zooming out to see where you are going next but 3D navigation the best for negotiating strange junctions.

Well, I used to have a Tomtom 910, the top of the line unit from something like 2 years ago, and as far as I am aware it's still updatable to the latest software. Their low-end units tend not to be updatable for so long but that's why they're the low end units!

Unless things have changed dramatically, TMC in this country is fairly poorly supported, I know that the TMC for my old tomtom 910 was terrible as tomtom had gone for one of two rival TMC carriers, and the one they went for is very badly supported in this country. No idea if other units have better support.

I now have a modern TomTom with wide landscape screen and I love it. I have all the route and speed info stacked on the RHS of the screen, leaving a nice square area for the moving map. This seems to suit me well. On my old TomTom all the data was at the bottom of the screen which made looking at the map like looking through a letterbox. Also, I seem to use 2D most of the time, as it makes it easier to see 3-4 moves ahead - 3D is only good for the junction you are actually on.

I don't know of anyone who's using it, so I can't ask questions, unfortunately.

As a coach driver, I'm expected to be able to find places without external help, so I'll happily pay 90 quid a year for information covering all my normal operational area to individual address level, which is what I get now, but I draw the line at about the same again just to give me advance warning of traffic problems when there's probably no way round it anyway, as the coach won't fit the diversionary route. If I was driving a car on the same sort of work, I'd probably go for TMC, especially if I was paid by the job.

That kills all of those for me except the Tomtom, then. If Garmin's not going to be good enough, & the others are good, but need a live internet connection, that's fine in the UK, but too expensive or too fiddly to set up in the rest of Europe. Unless there's a pan-European mobile data service with Gigabytes of data transfer available for not much money that I don't know about.

I've used both with the same program (On a PDA with a switchable screen), & I find a portrait format works better for me in 3D view, as it shows a useful road forecast for a couple of minutes, as against the minute or less I get with landscape. Now & again, I'll flick over to a 2D view, but only to check the surroundings when I'm parked or walking around a place.

The top end units are over a week's wages for me, as I need the full European maps. The ideal one would be the trucker's unit I've seen advertised, but that's *way* over any budget I can justify to myself. I've asked if the company would subsidise a unit, but got a refusal.

I suppose you get pretty much what you pay for, & the unit I use I bought cheaply in Kwiksave almost three years ago & I've updated the software once already.

Maybe it's time to bite the bullet & spendalotofmoney. At least the PDA software still works.

Well if the route starts of going north on the M1 for a many of furlongs, but then branches off somewhere that I'm not particularly familiar with (e.g. a narj custard) it'd be of benefit to accuracy of the arrival time if it already knew *my* average speed on that stretch of the M1.

Nothing to stop if falling back to hfrvat the oTmmTo "group averages" for stretches where it doesn't have my personal average.

Well OpenStreetMap has made leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, maybe they can start collecting average speeds per time of day information in due course.

My Honda appears to be equipped with a "free" lifetime subscription to TMC. Like a satnav istelf, sometimes TMC alerts are useful information such as an accident or roadworks, sometimes it's a stretch of slow moving traffic that you *know* is going to be there but it's not really worth re-routing around. Of course if you're somewhere unfamiliar you don't know which case applies.

Openstreetmap, by their own admission, are an awfully long way away from even the simplest current sat nav systems, they basically have GPS traces from users, and that's more or less it, routing metrics, types of roads, junction details, lanes, road signs, all that kind of thing, isn't there and isn't ever likely to be until an effort-free way of gathering that information comes about. The companies like navtec who gather this data have vans travelling the country all the time loaded with gadgetry and staff on board cataloging the details they need to prepare their maps, a small collection of people loading GPS tracks and occasionally embellishing them with additional information in an inconsistent manner isn't going to cut the mustard.

Ian Rawlings wrote: The companies like

Out of interest, how do Satnavs do the "Nav-ing" bit - I know how GPS works, but I've always been interested in how route planning is actually done inside them.

Steve