TomTom 940 and the tortuous road to recovery

Monday, September 20th, 2010

If you read my Epilog column in the new shiny edition of PC Pro, you will know that my respect for TomTom and its software upgrade process really couldn’t be much worse.

In short, the company released a major update for the TomTom 940 almost two months ago which simply didn’t work. It wouldn’t connect to the online TomTom Live services, which is the very reason for having this device. The Live services gives you features such as live traffic rerouting, Google access and so forth.

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Yoda on TomTom? It’s a road to disaster

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

I’ve always found novelty voices on satnavs about as funny as The News at Ten. Largely because I spent one of the most fraught hours of my life, lost on the outskirts of a French airport, thanks to the John Cleese voice my dad had thoughtfully downloaded onto his TomTom.

I could tell something was wrong when my dad started grinning from ear-to-ear the moment he switched the sodding thing on, before we pulled out of the car park. Five minutes later, something was definitely wrong, when for the third time in as many minutes, we had to cut across three lanes of traffic to make the required turn, only to get even more lost than we were in the first place.

The reason? Mr Cleese’s hilarious directions threw in the suffix “beaver right”, every time he issued the genuine direction “bear left”. Bear, beaver, get it? Yes, it had me in fits of laughter for, ooh, nano-seconds. The problem was, with the traffic noise and iffy speaker I couldn’t really hear what Basil Fawlty was saying, and thus bellowed at my dad to hang a sharp right every time he took a left. There’s a place for weak puns, and that place is The Daily Express - they have no place on satnav commentaries.

So it was with a weary sigh that I discovered TomTom is adding Yoda’s voice to its line-up of novelty accident causers this afternoon. Then I watched the spoofed “making of” video on YouTube, and I have to admit, it made me laugh…

Apple iPad: the world’s biggest satnav

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

I had lunch with satnav software makers CoPilot the other day – and no, it wasn’t in a roadside café. One of the more surprising revelations was that the company had just begun offering an iPad version of its software in the US; the most surprising revelation was that it was selling like hot cakes.

Using the 9.7in iPad screen as a satnav struck me as potentially reckless. With that A4-sized device mounted on your windscreen, you’re going to be blocking out a sizeable chunk of your field of vision. It’s more than double the size of TomTom’s biggest device, the Go 950.

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The PC Pro Father’s Day gift guide

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

Father’s Day is this Sunday and, as the big day looms ever closer, there’s now little time left to go out and hunt for the ideal gift. Just turn to the PC Pro A List, then, for the perfect presents that you can rush out and buy before it’s too late.

Those with photographic fathers are spoilt for choice: there are superb choices available no matter what you’re looking for, whether it’s a compact, DLSR or video camera.

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Top 10 Christmas gifts

Monday, December 8th, 2008

The second Monday in December has become known as “Cyber Monday”, when internet shopping levels peak ahead of Christmas.

In the current issue of PC Pro you’ll find a full Christmas gadget guide, with 41 products tested and reviewed, from photo frames to cameras to USB guitars. But to help you beat the rush this year, we’ve plucked out ten of the best from the feature and from our A List.

Samsung NC10 – £300

Hands-down the best netbook on the market right now. It feels as sturdy as a proper laptop, offers a hefty seven-and-a-half hour battery life and features an almost full-width keyboard. Stylish, strong and hugely portable – and all this for less than £300.

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Maps?! Where we’re going, we don’t need maps!

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

Growing up I always used to love family trips. A bit of sun, sand and ice cream; a nice sing-song; maybe a rollercoaster or two. An uncomfortable dip in the freezing, polluted sea; a nasty bout of the runs in a caravan chemical toilet; the chance to relentlessly bully my little sister and get relentlessly bullied by my big brother.

But there was one thing that really entertained us without fail: the obligatory map-reading fiasco. Some of the finest arguments I’ve ever witnessed occurred in the front of our car, usually to a bizarrely ill-fitting soundtrack of Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years (thanks for that, Dad). So it’s with great sadness that I realise I’ll never repeat the great shows put on by my parents.

You see, over the last few days I’ve driven nearly 1,400 miles around the UK on a bit of a mountain climbing quest, and the journeys were, it has to be said, uneventful. And it’s all the fault of my car’s newest shiny gadget, its very own 1.21-Jigawatt flux capacitor, if you will. Also known as TomTom.

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