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You’re not alone. I have a Dell GPS navigation system that’s supposed to work with my Axim X50. For the most part, it’s alright. But randomly, it thinks I’m off the road. Or it just decides the day I want to use it is not auspicious enough to pick up the satellite. I don’t why car companies think they can charge grands for this.

I’ve tried out a few satnavs. Firstly, a few years ago, I had an old Garmin Etrex. Had Co-pilot on my phone, a Sony one similar to tomtom, and now I have a tomtom.

I haven’t had many problems with it really, in fact I’m rather impressed. Just got to learn to trust it I think !

That is a crazy story, well I guess it did get you to your location. I have used a few gps systems and none of them have took me the way I thought they should. I think of all of them the garmin was the better of the 3. I think they do a good job of getting you there if you get lost but would not want to just follow them. I had one take me home from Nashville back to the Detroit area and it took me through back roads and through areas i did not like at all. Almost the same type of story. So if you buy a gps, I would only say get one for times when you are lost because other than that you could end up with another story.

Thanks for the review, I google maps works just wonders for me. I would rather save my money!

Hi Jake,
Wonderful story… i guess there must be a dozen stories about TomTom.
I had an early version for my PDA with a bluetooth receiver that i placed on my dashboard. A few of my experiences:
1. Once in the Ardennes in Belgium TT adviced me to go left… we didn’t; there was a steep gorge atleast 100m deep.
2. Once it adviced me to take an exit halfway my route. I did however I thought it was a perculiar choise. It brought me onto a roundabout. TT got confused and we kept on circling on that roundabout. If not my sense of direction helped me, we would have been there till today.
3. A second time in the Ardennes we had a nice detour just taking the ’shortest’ TT route. My receiver broke down for the second time… and we were totally lost,not knowing where we were.. Since then: ByeByeTomTom.

Hey… just wondering… does the Tom Tom have a “Route Method” button or something allowing you to select highway only, surface streets, fastest, shortest method etc.? Mine does, and I didn’t realize it was set to “avoid freeways” and sent me on some fairly roundabout routes until I figured it out. I use the Alpine GPS system.

Yup! I had the same thing happen with a Garmin Nuvi 350. My friend and I were out in Colorado on a vacation road trip. We were driving along when the Nuvi says, turn right on Corona Pass. So here we are driving up Corona Pass which goes from pavement, to gravel, to dirt and some of the biggest potholes we’ve ever seen.

The Nuvi says it’s only 15 miles. So we keep going…seeing moose, deer, and all sorts of wildlife. That part was cool. So we keep going and it’s getting dark. Another truck is following us. We let them pass and kept going. Then after several more miles I flagged them down. Turns out it was Search and Rescue. They were wondering where the hell we were going. The road dead ends about 16 miles in!

According to the Nuvi it went all the way through. Needless to say, we had to turn around and drive back 14 miles to get back on the highway and get back to the hotel.

It was quite an adventure. I’ll never forget that name Corona Pass for as long as I live!

:-)

The TomTom had a Route Method selection, but nothing about “Avoiding Dirt Roads”…very upsetting. I’ve seen much better success with the Garmin and Magellan products.

Hey folks, if you know a better route, TAKE IT and your navigation system will adjust. Use common sense.

This guy’s story is basically: the route seemed stupid, so I took it and it was stupid. Wow.

I have a Garmin c330. So far it has worked perfectly. It seems to find the simplest route. Of course it doesn’t know the shortcuts and avoidances that you learn as you drive. Extremely impressive I think in the way i works.

This week I had a horrible TomTom experience. I was taking I-95 up and down the east coast. When I was driving south, it kept telling me to get off, circle around on some side roads, and get back on I-95. It fooled me twice as I thought, “well, maybe it knows something about the route.” Then I realized it was crazy.

I continued down 95 south ignoring its repeated requests to take exit after exit. After about 40 miles it eventually gave up and gave sane directions.

Then, when I returned back on 95-N, it made absolutely zero sense. It was essentially telling me to turn around and go back on 95-S, over and over again. Yet my destination was correct, and when I looked at the full route in text mode, it showed me eventually getting on 95-N again.

On other trips it has worked fine, but for some reason I-95 makes it go insane.

Every GPS I’ve used will occasionally throw up a boner like that. They’re not intelligent, they’re only partially intelligent.

That said, the cheapest and best GPS *I* have found was the Delorme one. Basically, you plug the GPS dongle into your laptop, and then keep the laptop open the whole way. The advantage is that it’s wayy cheaper and since you have a whole PC, it has a lot more CPU, HD, memory, etc. (i.e. it’s better because it has room to BE better) The disadvantage is that you really need a copilot with you to read/interact with the thing, because it’s just a laptop with a dongle on it.

That said, my Delorme *did* tell me to take a right turn in Boston… Off of a 100 ft. high bridge! So as always, YMMV. But I like my Delorme. (Sucks ass in Canada, though. :( )

Funny, I’ve never had anything but good experiences with my TomTom. It always works well! :-)

That is why I invented http://www.tomtomupdates.com - go add your problem :)

Tom - www.mouselike.org

I have a Dell Axim loaded with TomTom software. It gets confused if you give it a real long route >100 miles with lots of different roads (like in a rural area w/small roads). But I think it is still better UI and instructions than every built-in car navigation I’ve ever used.

… and you wonder why that poor guy died in the middle of nowhere because his GPS told him to take seasonal logging trails in a winter storm?

Your not alone. My Magellen Roadmate 700 did this to me in North Carolina. It started to take me down a deserted road for about 10 miles, then the road turned to dirt and I made a u-turn and went back.

One other time it wanted me to drive up someones driveway and through their bck yard over a mountain to get to my new house.

These things can be handy but common sense in more important. If you ever feel uncomfortable with a route do not take it.

I too, always check google maps before a trip sometimes printing maps just in case.

I don’t know about other GPS systems, but Tom-Tom is a disgrace. It has on numerous occasions sent up non-existent roads, dead-ends or entirely wrong location. If I decide to say not take the route it suggests, it is insistent I U-turn immediately. The longer the journeym the longer the insistence. I gave up on the voice feature due to this alone. In the most recent update they removed some nice features which seem to create even more new annoyances. I cannot and do not recommend Tom-Tom. Having said that, I saw a Garmin and it even crapier, so it could be the best of a bad bunch for all I know.

My brother-in-law lives in a small town outside Austin, Texas. My mother in law lives nearer Houston.

On our way from Austin to Houston there was a nasty accident and the highway was closed. So we took the detour as directed by the cops. TomTom followed us that far… then there was a road closure on the detour. Now we’ve detoured from the detour…

When we found the third “Road Closed” sign we blew off TomTom, drove around the sign across the unpaved expanse of construction until we hit the main highway again some 5 miles further on than the original blockage. Total added trip time was about 2 hours.

TomTom worked alright until the triple-detour and then we were just screwed.

Maybe you should call it SUESUE!!!
\

like the ad.,

> Besides, I’d just return it after the trip and I’d have the best of both worlds…

While TomTom might not be the best satnav, you proved yourself an insufferable prick as well.

C’mon, if you don’t want it, don’t buy it. But don’t just steal the use of it, however bad.

Hey hey hey…

I was going to keep it until it did me wrong! Regardless, don’t make me sound so evil, BestBuy charged me a nice 15% restocking fee. (Which I knew about…) So it wasn’t exactly a “win, win” situation here.

Here, the best driver http://zdkors.theanswerman.org

tom tom one is a piece of crap. After purchase service is non existent. Went to use it and nothing. Apparently you have to reset it if not always in a charger. Now it doesn’t reset. Can’t find any 800 # to call. Waste of $350.