i would wholeheartedly tell anyone who didn't get it in a package to go buy a really nice gps at the store and save yourself the ridiculous price of that POS gps module from tomtom
if i had spent the 500 us on this thing and it performed the way it does, i would be filled with furious rage, rather than the extreme annoyance i'm experiencing since it came with the tech package (it was actually the rest of the items i wanted, not the gps, but, its a package)
Ok, I already own a portable Garming Nuvi, I am not in love with it and hate to have to take it off each time I have to use it so I tend not to use it. I liked the fact that it would display on the cars radio and that it would integrate with the hands free. I have great success with the hands free system for calls, hopefully it would be the same experience for GPS.
What is it that annoys you with the NAV system ?
the voice control for the nav doesn't work a quarter as good as the cars phone system does, i understand you liking to have it in the dash and not extra pieces, but i can't recommend anyone paying the 500 for the module as it stands right now
voice control is garbage, it works ok for 'fixed' commands, but it has a lot of trouble with names, in particular pois
if you dont ask for EXACTLY the poi name as it has it listed it wont find it and it will give you erroneous results
it starts navigating to where it thinks you want to go right away, never gives you an option to select from a list of places or to confirm where its going is what you want, just jumps right to the closest one (i can see where the idea of that is good, the execution however leaves a lot to be desired, especially with no way to voice search for a list of results)
the poi selection is very spotty, it doesn't even have subcategories for when you are using the screen controls, to narrow down what your looking for like restaurants, its shows you all, doesn't let you narrow down by style, same for shopping/stores
it didn't have our local county headquarters/state offices, county sherriff's office and jail, or the post office....
lately the safety lock has become an extreme nuisance, its constantly kicking out of voice command when you are slowing to a stop or going slow or starting from a stop
That sounds annoying, I haven't been a big user of POIs on my other GPS, but again i'd take it out when going to a new place where I wasn't sure and didn't want to be running around in circles.
What about traffic data and how the GPS handles it (re-routes ? or you have to force it to do so).
no problem at all, just trying to save others grief and headaches
if you have a standalone unit, i'd stick with that for the time being, see how it shakes out or if maybe a better company comes up with a module for it
i haven't tried that feature since i dont have a fixed 'work' location exactly
go try it out, have it try to find places to go by name and play around with trying to setup trips to specific pois
once it has the destination in, it works fairly well, the routes are good, and the instructions are fine, the visuals on the maps leave something to be desired, but its the getting to that point of having the route setup is the exercise in frustration