Please explain why, I got the impression they were virtually useless for anything but showing people how to get to B&Q or their Mums house
OK, I'm, no expert, so at risk of seriously compounding my foolishness, here we go !!
Garmin are the original and definitive GPS manufacturer. They started out in the avaiation and marine market. The software for this application is not as complicated as that needed for roads. I suspect that when moving into the street applications they just adjusted the software they were already using. This shows in the speed of screen updates and sometimes jerky appearence of the maps.
TomTom are the new "kid on the block" who started out writing software for hand held units, particularly Psion. Their first GPS, the navigator, went on sale in 2003. In 2004 they launched the TomTom Go which was designed to be intuitive in use and work straight out of the box, hence the name. The software was designed for street navigation from the start.
Any unit is only as good as the mapsource and data contained within it, Garmin use Navteq (both US based). Tomtom use Tele Atlas (both EU based). (incidently, the Rider 1 used Navteq) So which is best? There is huge and varied opinion on this, much seems to depend on where you live and which company has the most recent updates for your area. A straw poll and trawl on the net seems to come down on the side of TomTom, particularly in the EU, but not inclusively (see reivew in US here,)
http://www.gpsreview.net/navteq-vs-tele-atlas/
A recent review in RIDE Magazine also confirms this "The TomTom found all our addresses and routed us to our destinations quickly without any trouble, even knowing a cross-country short cut to miss out a town that is usually jammed, which was impressive,". Meanwhile "the Garmin struggled with one of our rural addresses that had no postcode........and didn't take a cross-country short cut that the TomTom did".
Recently TomTom made a bid of 2 billion Euros for TeleAtlas Mapping, Garmin entered the bidding war to try to block this but fell out after TomTom's bid of 2.9 billion. TomTom now own TeleAtlas. More recently they have signed an agreement with Google for the use of the maps in Google mapping. Google are looking at the hugh market for Mobilephone/GPS applications and obviously wanted the best. (maybe Google will buy out TT next). TomTom have the advantage of millions more users who are constantly posting map corrections on the net which helps them keep more upto date, particularly with things like oneway street changes and pedestrian walkways etc. Which again is confirmed in the RIDE report "It wasn't fooled by pedestrian areas and one-way city streets either; it's a faultless destination finder,"
On a more personal note, during a recent trip to Spain and Morocco with a dozen bikes there were about 6 Garmins and 1 TomTom. Leaving out Morocco as none of us had map data, althought the Garmins could have had if they had looked on here in Tim Cullis's Morocco pages, the TomTom was better in all respects, ie. route finding, hotel locating. Those without satnav started out following the Garmins, but after a few days I noticed that they had migrated across and were now behind me, particularly in the city centers after one Garmin was had by the police in spain after going the wrong way down a one-way street.
None of the units were faultless, even the TT got it wrong from time to time. Some of the problems seemed to stem from the fact that the users, some of them at least, were not familiar with the menu's and functions. So my advise, for what its worth, to any model user would be to take time out to play with it and get fully familiar with what it can and can't do, and check the route it has selected against a map before you set off, (easy to do with a TT) don't just follow it blindly.
I believe that because Garmin stands for GPS, like Hoover stands for cleaning carpets, then there is a biase towards them. Even RIDE made them the overall winner by 1 point in their review because they claimed the Garmin had a much superior ease of use. Which is not true, and even if it were what good is ease of use if thing dosn't know where you want to go?
The Scala Rider bluetooth headset free with the TT is good and has a great battery life, if never needed recharging all the 3 weeks I was away.
If you want to connect to Autocom then the Garmin is easier.
If you are still not sure which is best then just look at the price.
OC.
