sshh its a secret

Sorry for the user name but I don't want my man to know this post is by me.
I'm going for the element of surprise so bear with me please!

Ok.....
I'm trying to sort out some sat nav for my man for christmas.
But don't really know where to start.

I've searched the net and through a few posts on here and I'm a bit more with it than I was.
I see I've got some options but I'm so confused!


Option 1 ......Stand alone gps unit.

Is the Garmin Street Pilot i3 any good?

Or is the Tom Tom Go 300 better?

OR....

Option 2 is a PDA but I don't really know what a PDA is!!!

What can you do with it?
Would this be better than a stand alone gps?


I had though of spending around £200 but that wasn't very realistic was it!


Please can someone help me figure this out!

Thanks in advance.

16vmarc

Im sure Pete will love whatever you get him

Jamo

iTrader: (23)

pda is a small computer, so you can do most of the things you can do on a laptop, plus have your sat nav, I have owned one of these and also a tomtomgo 300, my dad also has the navman icn530. by far the best option is the pda as you can add what you want to it, plus use it for other things as well.

I have seen a pda set up recently for around £200 let me just have a quick look


edit:
thought so click here, this should do all you need

http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/product....2d6295b6d08b45

sshh its a secret

Thanks for that

So you can use a PDA for something like word documents? Music?
Could he watch a film on it?

Oh my god I'm so thick

cw42

iTrader: (1)

Have a good look around this site
It will tell you all you need to know about the differences between a standalone gps, like the tom tom go, or a pda based gps, like a hewlett packard ipaq.
The main question to ask is: Will your partner use a pda away from the car? You can do all sorts of things with a pda, from listening to mp3's, watching videos, surfing the web, even, if you get an o2 xda, use it as a mobile phone
They can store countless pictures of your loved ones, and scoobys , and you can use them to edit word and excel files. I use mine extensively at work, and until recently used it with tom tom 3 in my car, which was excellent. Just search by postcode where you want to go, and the sat-nav shows you the way.

Beware though, the maps on any system you buy will not be 100% accurate, and you will get lost very occasionally (tom tom have finally included the m6 toll road, but until recently, if you were on it, it looked like you were driving over a field in brum )

I've got a dell axim x5, which cost me £350 off ebay 2 years ago including tom tom 3 and some memory cards.

Hope that helps,
Chris.

pm me with any other questions you may have.

GC8

Yes. I have a Mitac Mio 168 PDA which has a GPS receiver built in, you will need to buy a couple of SD cards; but watching movies is perfectly possible. Ive just transfered 'A Close Shave' and 'The Wrong Trousers' to Secure Digital and its just over half filled a cheap 256MB card. The PDA cost £210 including delivery and it is excellent; I chanced across a copy of TomTom 5 UK & Europe for £5 and Im away..... A PDA running TT5 is massively superior to a dedicated TomTom unit; it has a brilliant screen, its much faster, its a PDA which doubles as a small video player and it plays MP3s too. Finally its far cheaper than even the lowliest TomTom model. The Garmin has a screen thats about as big as a matchbox btw, so I havent really mentioned it.


Simon

GC8

I forgot to mention; that the Mio 168 comes with a car windscreen mount, a free USB cradle (from one supplier) a case and best of all; an external GPS antenna.

Milamber

iTrader: (2)

I have an IPAQ with a seperate gps unit and run tomtom 5.

The ipaq is brilliant, I use it for word documents digital dictation, music, pictures, spreadsheets, satnav. Haven't worked out how to watch films on it yet but no big deal. Ialso play games on it whilst waiting. It syncros withmy work calendar which is invaluable.

It's NOT without problems though, getting tomtom and the bluetooth to work after the battery goes flat is a bitch (the system does a hard reset) and a standalone unit would be better in this regard, but in this regard only.

I would always go the pda route myself.

GC8

If you remind me in a week or two then I will forward a link for an MPEG4/DivX player and a decent encoder too. You can get excellent (everythings relative...) picture and sound in 320x240 at 180MBs per hour.

Using a PDA with an integrated receiver is far simpler, more convenient and less bulky; and you dont suffer from flat batteries either.


Simon

MrShades

Having been there, seen it, got tangled up in the cables and generally fed up with all the crap over the dash and in the footwells - I ditched the PDA a few months ago in favour of...

...TomTom Go 500... A truly wonderful bit of kit.

Agreed, a PDA can be used for other 'stuff' but no-one ever does. The PDA market was starting to drift off into nothingness until a few years ago when PDA based sat-navs appeared - as no-one realistically used them for anything else.

OK, the PDA fans will tell you that you can watch movies, listen to MP3s and keep your social diary up to date - as well as work on Excel, Word and Powerpoint documents and read your email - but it's all tosh. You can, but you don't....

Self contained, well designed, good screen and battery life, loud enough to be heard properly (most PDA based units have useless speakers and don't go loud enough), etc. etc. - TomTom Go is the only answer.

As with PDA based TomTom Navigator all the speed camera databases, POI files etc. can be put on TTG - along with different verbal warnings for the different speed limits, etc.

Shades

sshh its a secret

well hubby has got an mp3 phone that he never uses for anything other than phone calls. He hardly even uses it for text so maye the PDA would be more than he would need.

But then I would use it!! lol
Not really the point though because its for him not me!

So has anyone compared the Garmin Street Pilot i3 and the Tom Tom go 300

???

GC8

The Garmin is way too small; the screens about as big as a box of Bryant & May matches! The TomToms are bulky and pretty crap value compared to a PDA...; theyre slow and the screens are crap. The battery life on my PDA is about six hours too... Finally; it fits in my pocket!

Milamber

iTrader: (2)

Yeah you can end up with stuff all over the dash but modern gps units will work from deep inside the glove box and you can leave the pda plugged in so its always charging.

I DO use my pda to its fullest extent possible. Tomtom 5 lets your pda access your bluetooth phone and every 10 minutes dials up and if there is a traffic jam it will recalculate the route for you, dunno if the others do that or not?

PDA for me

fast bloke

I have a tomtom300 - its is brilliant if you spend a bit of time adding POI's. My father has a Garmin C330. maps are better in NI, but functionality is very poor.

btw - Did you ever do the rally day?

supna

I got this one, great bit of kit and pretty close to your original budget:
http://www.globalpositioningsystems....scription.html

Tiggs

is this something he wants? if it is.....LET HIM BUY IT!

a mans gadget is a personal choice and you wont please him with this - even if its EXACTLY what he would have bought he will still wonder if he could have done better with his own research. too many choices, you cant win.

ajm

I find myself agreeing with Tiggs!

GC8

Yes; an unusually constructive post from Tiggs (who's off work feeling poorly today...).

ajm

Maybe the sarcastic quip (followed by an extraneous analogy) is still to come...

Jap2Scrap

Do any of the PDA's come wifi ready? I can get free wifi access at work so that'd be a plus.

I'd appreciate a link, if anyone can supply one, to a PDA with wifi, all the usual capabilities and good SatNav software.

GC8

Some do; one of the trade-offs with having an in-built GPS receiver, is that Bluetooth and WiFi are omitted. You can add either using the SDIO slot though. Essentially thats a slot that takes an SD/MMC card or an SDIO format expansion card. WiFi card can be bought for about £25 and you can combine them with the GPS function to easily locate 'hotspots' (if youre a geek that is...).


Simon

Iain Young

I've got both.

The screen on my TomTom Go 700 is much clearer in the car than my ipaq 4700, it's very responsive, and the tomtom calculates routes etc much faster than the pda can manage. So I don't know where you got that information from.

GC8

Principally; I was referring to colour-depth. TomTom Gos have 4096 colours only I believe; added to that, the ones Ive seen really havent been very clear either. Re-reading your post Iain, Id hope that your 700 does have a better screen; hopefully itll have a faster CPU too. My 'slow' remark referred to the lesser models which run a 200MHz (xScale?) CPU.


Simon

Iain Young

The ipaq has a better screen, but it's not as good in the car. The tomtom has a special anti-glare / reflection coating. On a sunny day it's practically impossible to see anything on the ipaq screen. Not much use when trying to navigate around...

Milamber

iTrader: (2)

I have an antiglare screen on my ipaq

scoob_babe

I already had an Ipaq but opted to get the TT Go 300 as a stand alone unit as Rich takes the car off over weekends with out me and I wouldn't want him carting my Ipaq off with him - there's too much stuff on there that I use.


PS - Anyone know if the standard TomTom maps are auto updated or do I have to buy a full UK upgrade?!?!