I’m hoping my girlfriend will buy me one for my birthday next month, keep taking her into places like Halfords. Hopes she takes the hint 
i have a garmin street piolot 111
took a little geting used to
tom tom go had it 6 months good for built up areas …it takes the grief out of navigating…read the route before setting off just to check its taking me to right place…sometimes it appears to send you on an odd route…but if you know a better one why are you using the sat nav…went to aparty in Manchester M3 recently dark & wet.used the sat nav straight it took us outside the door…no trying to read the map in the dark …safety first
I bought the Navman iCN650 just before last Christmas,and whilst it cost me just over £600,it was money well spent.
Listening to the voice prompts and only having to glance at the display saves a lot of time and makes for safer driving,no more driving along with map in hand!
I also find it good to see on the display exactly where I am.
No more driving around in the dark or in fog trying to see where you are heading for,the satnav shows you where you are and how far to the next turn.
It has street level mapping for sixteen European countries in an internal memory,so no downloading or swapping memory cards, and as yet there isn’t a place I’ve been to that isn’t in the satnav.
Having said all that,it isn’t 100%.Sometimes it will tell you to exit at a junction and then re-enter at the same junction,but keeping an eye on the 3-D display solves that.
Jaycool007:
If your on multi drop say 25 drops or so, will sat nav put the drops in route order for you if you type in all the addresses?Jay
My Mio 168 did you could put all your drops in (I did 12 one day) press something like best route and it will put you onto all of them no problems.
Also if you think you know better just go that way it recalculates in less then 2 secs!
I use an Ipaq PDA with TT3 and a Holos GPS gradle…
Granted, TT3 isn’t really HGV friendly and you still have to go over the route with a MAP first…
BUT…
It tells you how far it is till your next ‘action’… i.e. You may sort of know the road, but TT tells you that the island is 3.7 miles ahead, and counts down, so you know if it’s safe to overtake, pour a coffee… 
get a ■■■ out, etc
If you put in realistic road speeds, the ETA is absolutely spot on… This has come in useful when the TO is on the phone yelling “when will you be there”
It shows you a ‘helicopter’ view of your map, so you have some idea what’s ahead… You might need to be on a parrallel road but your not sure cuz there are tree’s or houses blocking the view, but you can see it with TT
I have over 600 Somerfield and Kwiksave stores saved in mine (downloaded for nothing from one of many GPS sites), so as I approach the store in a town, I can see a big green ‘S’ coming on the screen long before I can actually see it on a busy high street…
Basically, In a lorry, it’s not a complete MAP replacement… YET… !!! BUT it’s a ■■■■ good companion, and DOES take a bit of the stress out of getting lost…
ALSO… If you go for a PDA with software, as opposed to a ‘GPS box’, you have the advantage of using it as you would any laptop… Music, Films, Games, MS Office (if you feel the need to do a spreadsheet whilst sat on the bay… 
)
I have all my TT stuff, over 50 mp3’s, 5 or 6 episodes of SG1, CSI, L&O, simpsons, etc… (over 5hrs of tv to entertain on the quiet nights), a wicked virtual pool game, two golf games, Tomb raider, and a C&C battle type game…
And as it’s usually plugged into the cradle, it’s got power, so battery life is never an issue…
Hope that helps make up your mind…
Luv
Chrisie… 
Andyroo:
Jaycool007:
If your on multi drop say 25 drops or so, will sat nav put the drops in route order for you if you type in all the addresses?Jay
I reckon it should tell you the best route to a new job!
PMSL
simon
kitkat:
good old a-z never let me down yet
Ditto that one KK
simon
Ragtop:
I use an Ipaq PDA with TT3 and a Holos GPS gradle…Hope that helps make up your mind…
How much and from where (and which Ipaq, assuming there’s more than one!)■■
It will be useful for me as from time to time i got back onto van work when its quiet on class 2 doing 40 + drops though agency in completly new area so will save me a lot of time having to look at A-Z after each drop
Ipaq 3950… (I got mine for now’t…) but on Ebay they’re only £200ish… might be cheaper than that… Basically you want a PDA with a processor speed of atleast 400Mhz, otherwise TT can run slow, and will tell you to turn AFTER you’ve gone past… So made sure you get a ‘decsent’ PDA… (avoid ‘palm’ stuff, as they use there own OS… Ipaq, HP, etc, use Windows…
TT3… I kinda got thet free too… 
but I believe it’s about £100… ■■ Again try Ebay, or any Pocket GPS www site…
There are different ways to get your PDA to comunicate with a GPS receiver (the arial)…
You’d be best off getting a Blue tooth PDA so you can use a BlueTooth receiver… This way you don’t have any wires between them, and can even leave the receiver in your bag if the signal if good enuf… Downside to BT is that you then have another battery life to think about (they use a couple of AA’s or a PP3 iirc) and last about 10hrs…!!! Having it permantly plugged into a power source kinda defeats the point in Blue tooth tho, which is why I went for a cradle… (That, and my pda aint got bt… )
The cradle option basically sits the PDA like a phone cradle… It supplies power (so batt life is never an issue) it has a built in amplifier with two small speakers… Don’t expect Hi-Fi, but it’s just right for SatNav vocal direction… And of course a little GPS arial on the back…
Not only that, but it’s got a goose neck witha window sucker (mines only fallen off twice in 3 months, both due to mucky glass) so you can stick it right infront of you… With the other options, you would still need to purchase a cradle to hold the PDA anyway…
Downside… If todays truck ain’t got a working lighter or hella, the SatNav won’t work, and you’re back to ‘autoroute’ type assistance…
Mine cost £95 with p&p from “total pda”… It works on 12-30v, so is fine on 24v 
and only has one trailing wire, which is the power lead… The arial folds away, the goose comes off, and wires plug in/out, so it’s ‘compact’ )two ■■■ packets)…
Also worth getting a hella to lighter converter, and a lighter to lighter extention lead… That way you’re covered for all occasions… 
Something worth mentioning at this point is…
If you go for the blue tooth option, which is the latest ‘tool’ anyway, you can have a cradle with different plugs and sockets… One being an extra CF slot… (you can get CF radio’s, camera’s, memory, barcode readers… etc… )Depends how much you want to get into it really…
My basic setup would cost you circa £400-480, but if you’re familiar with Ebay, you could probably get a similar setup for closer to £250-300… !!!
Hope that isn’t too much techno babble…
Luv
Chrisie…
geezer466:
Super Dan:
I bought a Mio 168, with GB and ireland mapping and only £250!absolutly top bit of kit!
But lost it in a truck 2 weeks after buying it I’m now saving for another!
I have one also. Excellent piece of kit well worth the money and it has the GPS built in so you can easily move it from vehicle to vehicle. With a 512 sd card was about £220. Tom Tom 3 a mate gave me a cd.
How on earth did you lose it??
i got 1 of those best thing is is that it is all in 1 no wires or blue tooth gps required so it is truly portable and at the price good value for money over all the rest and i use mine with tomtom
Super Dan:
But lost it in a truck 2 weeks after buying it I’m now saving for another!
can you claim for it on your House contents insurance ?
I use an ipaq 2210, tomtom 3 and bluetooth gps receiver. Bought on ebay (new) for £400 about 6 months ago.
The only problem I have is that I can either be charging the Ipaq or the gps, but not both at the same time which is a bit of a pain.
Normaly the Ipaq stays on charge when in use, and the gps gets charged after about 11 hours continuous use. Would have prefered not to have bluetooth.
I use the most basic Ipaq you can get. The 1910, you have to get a special cradle so that it can transfer the data from the GPS receiver via infrared, as long as I close down all other programmes running on it it works just fine, not slow at all.
Ipaq 1910 is very cheap <£100 on ebay
Cradle + Gps receiver £90
TomTom3
Less then £200 for the lot, does the job for me.
Well,mine nearly went back today,because I had removed something by accident,whilst downloading the latest update from the manufacturers website.
I’m pleased to say,everything is now ok,and on top of that,I’ve just downloaded the latest speed camera database from a website I found for GPS/Sat Nav.
So tomorrow I’ll go out and try it.
Ken.
I’ve got an iPAQ 2210 with TomTom Navigator 3 and the wired GPS.
If you go the PDA route, you have three options for your GPS:
- Bluetooth
- CompactFlash (or similar)
- Wired
Bluetooth gives you less wires in the cab, but you have to make sure that the receiver battery is charged.
Wired solves the problem of batteries, but then you’ve got an extra cable to deal with (between the GPS receiver and the PDA).
CompactFlash would appear to be the neatest solution (since effectively sits “in” the PDA), but that means that you lose your CF slot (my PDA has CF and SD slots; I could use a CF GPS receiver, but SD memory is slower than CF). It also means that the GPS receiver has to be next to the PDA, which might not be the most optimum place for receiving the GPS signal.
I went for the wired option as
- It’s cheaper than Bluetooth
- No hassle with charging up the receiver, which would be a real problem as it only gets used once every other week on average
- Allows optimum placement of PDA for good vision and GPS antenna for good signal reception, at the same time.
As others have said, TomTom Navigator 3 is good, but it can give bad routes sometimes. It’s a good idea to check the route it’s plotted against a map. However, the real benefit is the fact that you no longer have to worry about searching out for road signs, looking for turnings, etc. It’s like having your route printed out in front of you, but updating automatically, telling you where the turnings actually are.
Ragtop:
Mine cost £95 with p&p from “total pda”
I got mine from TotalPDA, but I’m not sure I’d recommend them. I suggest having a look on their forum (I’ve put a posting in, for example), before making your decision.
Ragtop:
avoid ‘palm’ stuff, as they use there own OS… Ipaq, HP, etc, use Windows…
TomTom Navigator 3 is now available for PalmOS, and running Windows isn’t necessarily a positive selling point for many people (including me 
)
I’ve found it!!
When you turn it on it gaves my phone number and name… anyway got a call today like this
‘hi is that Super Dan?’
‘err yes’
‘Are you a whitbread driver’
‘No agy’
‘Well i’ve just found this little PC thing under the drivers seat in my cab and its got your name on it!!!’
‘TOP BLOKE i’ll meet you at the depot at 2’
‘ok’
To say i’m made up is an understatement, anyway he got a ‘little’ something for his trouble and I’m back with my Mio again!
The missus has told me I’ve got to tie it round my neck!
Don’t get me wrong, i’m no advicate for windows… BUT… In the limited world of PDA’s, Pocket Windows rules…
If you go to any of these PDA sites for the free downloads, most of them will be for Windows and won’t work on PalmOS… It’s not that it’s ‘bad’, just that there’s not alot of third-party software, compared to PW…
Also upgrading would be limited… If you already have a PDA with PW and the backups on yor PC, you could purchase any new ‘proper’ PDA and be able to re-use it all…
If you went the Palm route, you’d have to get another Palm to re-use the software you already had… 
Regarding the various options…
If I were to go out and get all my kit again, I would get a PDA with BlueTooth for future hardware options, BUT I would still use the cradle GPS over any other option, as IMO it’s the best all-rounder… It’s one single unit once the PDA is inserted (even PDA’s with built-in recievers will need a cradle to hold them up for you to see…!!! )
There’s built-in amplification, built-in arial, built-in charger…
Just one power lead trailing to the lighter/hella
Other than a TT-GO GPS-Box, there isn’t a more compact option, but of course, you still have the movie/mp3/game options available over the TT-GO…
Luv
Chrisie…
Hummm…am I just being an old fashioned ■■■■ ?
I am not tempted by yet another piece of technology thingie in my cab. I prefer the good old maps which you can flicker through and put your greasy mayonaise fingers on. Nothing beats getting on a conferrence call to another driver and get that human to human advice. And then off course, there’s the over all adrenalin rush when you try to find things from that mental map inside your head and a few scribbles on a note.
Guess that’s why I love going new places.
■■
Jo