It's not generally that much use messing with the speeds that much unless you're in a slow vehicle, when I first played with satnav I also used to fiddle about with these kind of settings but it'll make things better on one route and worse on another, best to check the routes and use the satnav as a semi-intelligent moving map.
Yes, however tomtom's phone software is very old and out of date, and won't see any more updates as they're still selling it but no longer developing it. I also used to use it with a bluetooth GPS on my phone but now my phone has built-in GPS and given how little I use satnav these days, I prefer the relatively crap but more convenient all-in-one phone stuff. It was only in the last 2 months or so that I deleted tomtom from the phone.
Also, I now find myself using the GPS and mapping features quite a bit away from the car, e.g. using nokia maps at Goodwood Revival to store where the car was parked, which came in useful when I came out and completely forgot where I'd parked the blasted thing!
Nokia N95 has a fairly large screen so it works well, and while the speakers are easily loud enough to make the directions audible, I plug it into the car hifi (N95 has a standard headphone socket) for two reasons, one is that it plays (and downloads, no computer needed) my podcasts, but the other is that the N95 is quite incredible for a phone in that if you plug it into a set of headphones, it whacks up the gain on the microphone and does all the echo cancellation stuff on the audio coming out of the stereo and noise filtering from the car engine, and works extremely well as a hands-free car kit on its own. I just hit "answer" and talk and despite the phone being a little over a foot away from me in a diesel car, I can be easily heard, easily the best hands-free kit I've ever had and it's always there ;-) No faffing about with bluetooth headsets etc. It fades the music and satnav out while the phone is being used and the caller comes through the stereo. Very nice.
Ah, that's how they do it! I always thought the new Tomtom I got was uncannily accurate on estimating a journey time. On a recent journey of about 4 hours, it got the total time right to within 10 minutes, including a couple of stops. I was very impressed.
It'll only be using speed profiles if it's the latest version 8 on the more spiffy hardware I think, and it'll be a subscription service either free or costing something, chances are you'll have to opt in as it involves you sending your trip data to their servers for road profiling. If you've not seen any of that then it's just the benefits of their map data being better, including the speed limits, other software assumes A roads are all the same speed across the country, which is plainly nonsense. Their journey times are very good, although google maps looks pretty good too, garmin and nokia maps are dreadful.
Talking of Tom Toms, does anyone else drive the A1 north of the new M62 interchange. My Tom Tom software knows the new section of A1 is there but shows me driving through the fields beside it.
Mike
No idea. I pluggit into Celyn's 12v socket, and the socket fuse blew. The unit continued to jbex for a bit longer whilst pluggit into Bertie, but then dieded. I've replaced the fuse in Celyn (or rather arAustin did), but the satnav stayed dedded.
What would be really clever would be if the satnav recorded your own personal average speeds for each stretch of road and used that when planning future routes.
Ah, usually someone else beats me to good ideas.
well if you stick within the laws of the land and the laws of physics the only way to manage it is to join the motorway from a dual carriageway where you're already doing 70.
Me too (well exceed an average of 70 actually) but I generally avoid motorways at peak times.
On or around Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:57:16 +0100, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:
depends on what and when and where, I've been known to average about 5 on the M6 on a bank holiday weekend :-(
OK, it's only for a few miles, and once you get past the Blackpool turn you're up to 70+ again. But a couple of miles of 5 mph makes mincemeat of your average speed, as does pulling into the services for a pitstop, even if it's just a quick in-and-out for a pee with no fuel or food it takes 10 minutes, typically, from leaving the m-way to getting back on it again. So for that hour which includes the pit-stop you've got to do 70 miles in 50 minutes, which is 84 mph. If you stopped for 20 minutes 'cos you also went into the shop and bought sweets, pop and a CD that caught your eye, then you have 20 minutes time to make up - to do that within an hour means *averaging* 105 for the next 40 minutes/70 miles - if the road's clear of traffic, cameras and dibbles, you could do that in some motors - bearing in mind gradients and such and the time take to get up to speed, you've probably got to try to do a steady 110. None of my motors with the exception of the sierra[1] would do that. You don't have to actually do the catch-up in an hour, of course - you could catch up in a long journey over the space of the next 140 miles, in an hour and 40, which works out the same as the 84 mph average above, and is actually more achievable even given a motor that can cruise at 110.
It's not hard to average 70 on a shortish bit of motorway driving. I doubt many get close on a long journey though, and I doubt it's physically possible on the M6...
[1] not at the moment, it's defunct. but it was capable of about 125 flat out.On or around Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:45:28 +0100, "Dave Larrington" enlightened us thusly:
now that I like.
I thought Hertz Van Rentals played for Eindhoven.
[snip]
I usually seem to average about 50-60 on motorways, if there are no significant roadjbexf etc. Theifrow from here is 20-30 minutes (mostly fastish) A-roads, the rest m/way, more or less 100 miles and takes around 2 hours depending. Gurgle maps wants me to go all the way on A roads, 93 miles, 2 hours (and indeed I did that on the way back and it was much less tedious than the m/way), but reckons 2 hours for the m/way route (103 miles) as well.
Classy, innit? I was wondering if Hertz's satnav was worth the extra daily fee... I need wonder no more...
On or around Sat, 18 Oct 2008 12:34:03 +0000 (UTC), Carl LHS Williams enlightened us thusly:
I wonder if you can get away with just dumping the car in a car park with a note saying "satnav couldn't find your depot, and I can't either".
I've had trouble both finding my way out from Hertz San Francisco and had trouble finding my way back without using Satnav. Maybe they should move it to a more sensible location.
Recently I've changed allegiance to having trouble finding Berlin Tegel with my own satnav.
Tegel's due to disappear in a puff of smoke soon so that problem will resolve itself.
I've got it on my pda, The old one showed the old road, and tried hard to divert me onto passing roads from the M1. The Arj one (with updated maps) has me definitely on the arj M1.
Is it ?
Yer not wrong, well Schoenefeld's another airport I'll have to get used to getting lost driving in and out of.
In news:gdcl3r$j7a$ snipped-for-privacy@registered.motzarella.org, Carl LHS Williams tweaked the Babbage-Engine to tell us:
On that particular motorcar it came as standard. It was terminally clueless about one-way streets as well.
That's clever for routes you use a lot, but then, over those routes you don't need your satnav. The TomTom trick is cleverer for routes you've never used before, where you'll actually need it.
Richard
What I'd like to see is the program remembering your speed for various categories of road (Country lane, Motorway or whatever) & applying it whenever you work out a route. The category data is already in the database, all it'd need to do would be to average out your speed data over a few days.
One for the wish list....
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