Apprentice lost in London

[ARW]

Like many young people of today they have no geographical knowledge what city they are in or of the major road network in the UK - so all they do IS follow a satnav.

I am not expecting them to know if Doncaster is North or South of Manchester - but I would expect them to know which is most Easterly.

Here is a good example of what I have to put up with.

Take a new estate and not showing on Google maps. You give them a reference from what should be a known staring point to that estate.

"Get yourself to that school in Auckley where we fitted the Christmas tree lights on the tree opposite the school next to the main road" "I cannot remember that" "The one where you fell off the A frames and landed in that pile of dog shit" "Oh yes - how do you get to the school?"

[NY]

Did he navigate to the school on the previous occasion? Did he drive and have to follow road signs. If not to both, then I wouldn't expect him to have been paying much attention to the exact route that you took, and maybe not even to approximately where the school was (eg N, S, E or W of where you started from - he placed all the responsibility for getting there on whoever was driving.

However I'd expect if you gave him a postcode and an online map to show where that postcode is, he should be able to use the map to work out a route there, as a backup in case the satnav failed.

I use satnav for turn-by-turn directions to a place I've never been to before, but I always look it up on the map first of all, and even look for the exact house on Streetview, and work out how I'll get there. I use the satnav so I don't have to memorise (or write down and try to glance at as I'm driving) the exact turns, safe in the knowledge that it the satnav fails I know roughly where I'll be going so I can try and match landmarks against an OS map (*) if I need to do it manually, having stopped to look at the map.

(*) I have Viewranger on my phone which has offline copies of all the UK

1:50,000 and 1:25,000 maps. Normally it shows on the map where I am, but if the GPS fails I can still use it as if it was a paper map with no "you are here" crosshairs.

[ARW]

A school that is in a village not far from where he has spent the last 19 years living should be good enough.

A school that he has worked at on more than one occassion.

The first and only time he has set up outside public Christmas Tree lights and then he passed them every day for at least a week when they were switched on whilst travelling to another local job.

[dennis]

You got a huge benefit from having a satnav today with all the floods. It still took 2 hours o do a normally 35 min trip but others doing the same were still out there after 3.5 hours. It took some really out of the way routes but the tomtom live map was red everywhere. Maps are of no use whatsoever in those conditions.

[Vir Campestris]

You have a choice. You can, if you wish, pay a premium and get lifetime map updates. IIRC the premium is a lot less than £60.

Andy

[James Wilkinson]

I could probably get a new satnav with a new map already on it for under= =A360.

Anyway, I didn't want constant map updates, I wanted one. One every 5 y= ears or so is enough, by which time I'll probably have a different make = of Satnav.

-- =

The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a repl= acement.

[Tim+]

Or just use "Waze" (or many of the other free navigation apps).

Tim

[James Wilkinson]

A satnav is a lot cheaper than a smartphone.

Did you notice the Americans are getting all upset about Waze apparently= causing congestion in side streets?

-- =

The Post Office just recalled their latest stamps. They had pictures of lawyers on them, and people couldn't figure out which side to spit on.

[dennis]

You can get one with lifetime maps for £70 on amazon.

The satnavs with lifetime maps are usually better hardware and do things like route updates quicker IME.

[James Wilkinson]

I wasn't aware anything had lifetime maps, that sounds good, although I'= d have to get one from a well known make that wasn't going to go bust in= a few years.

Why are those things connected?

-- =

Join the Navy and feel a man!

[Andy Burns]

Beware the definition of "lifetime".

[James Wilkinson]

I would assume the life of the satnav unit in this case (i.e. you can't = get free maps on a new device).

-- =

"Oh god," sighed the wife one morning, "I'm convinced my mind is almost= completely gone!" Her husband looked up from the newspaper and commented, "I'm not surprised: You've been giving me a piece of it every day for tw= enty years!"

[Andy Burns]

"When we use a word," TomTom said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what we choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

Lifetime ends when they stop supporting the device, not when the device breaks.

[James Wilkinson]

't get free maps on a new device).

I feel you're being overly pessimistic.

-- =

The 2 most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

[Tim+]

Having been an original Thomson TiVo owner with a "lifetime" contract, I have to agree with Andy.

Tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

I.e. one day over the warranty period

[James Wilkinson]

No, the life of it, i.e. until it breaks. I've got the earliest Tomtom = still going.

-- =

A female news anchor who, the day after it was supposed to have snowed a= nd didn't, turned to the weatherman and asked, "So Bob, where's that eig= ht inches you promised me last night?"

[Capitol]

I paid 32 pounds for a 7 inch sat nav with free updates.

[Capitol]

My Tomtom experiences convince me never to buy them again. From new, the maps were out of date and the units failed miserably after a couple of years.

[dennis]

The tomtom I have has been supplied with new maps for about 4 years now. There will be a time when the device will be incapable of running the software updates and hence the new maps.

You need to be aware that the updates can be huge, my western european one gets about 8 Gbyte updates every three months and smaller updates frequently. The new one my daughter has ordered has world maps so the updates will be a lot bigger.