But you could do that if needed. That's where the next generation will fail.
Say you were travelling from Kent to South Yorkshire and were on the M25 at Dartford. You were going to take the M11 A14 (because the SatSav told you to) but the radio reports said that the M11 was closed due to an accident. I suspect that you would not have to look in a map book to make a good alternative route.
Personally I would consider missing a caravan site by miles to be a bonus:-)
=A0 London SW
I agree, I tell SWMBO that the best thing about satnavs is that it always knows where you want to be, so it doesn't matter one iota if you take a wrong turning or need to divert because of roadworks etc. TomToms in particular update so quickly and unfussily that if you think you are going the right way and it disagrees it will simply go along with you and sort the end game out.
Having said all of that, I also like to supplement with a quick view of Google Streeview, for example for finding hotels on holiday. Knowing that you've actually seen the building that you are heading for, and perhaps the shops either side of it, really aids those final few 100m or so when the satnav thinks you are there.
All things that maps don't do!
Matt
That would depend on the age of the map (or how often the satnav info is updated). My A-Z or rather one of them left behind by my ex flatmate is quite wrong. The pub she used to strip in is now a muslim cultural centre. If I check another map it seems my parents live near stratford goods yard, now it's the olympic site.
Ah well, on my Gamins at least the POI data often included a telephone number so if you are that short of fuel you can often phone ahead and find out.
Pre GPS and when going SE from Thurso to Dornoch 'she' indicated she was just going onto reserve on her XV750. 60 miles later after not seeing an open petrol station along the way she finally ran out. I siphoned 1/2 of what I had left in the BMW (and I had daughter pillion and was towing a trailer but it had a bigger tank) and we eventually found an open station and were able to fill both bikes up .
Who knows how many just_off_the_main_drag petrol stations we passed along the route? ;-(
Next time we had the GPS and it's never been an issue since. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
Not if they are suitably trained.
Pre GPS our daughter (8 years old at the time) was my navigator when she was pillion and would give me direction confirmations over the intercom. Taking the map out of the plastic bag, turning the page and putting it back (at 70mph) also tuned her hand / eye coordination.We did have to go back and pick up a torch once though (it was a Mini Maglite and you never leave a downed man). ;-)
Assuming the live traffic map had it in the system you can either make those decisions yourself as they pop up or with 'Traffic avoidance' enabled it would already be routing you around the problem. ;-)
Depends how long you had been on the road for I guess. ;-)
We did turn up at one site (late, dark, raining (yes, we were in England)) and were greeted with a 'No Motorcycles' sign? So we went round the corner and found another and I asked the reception if they were ok with Motorcycles. "No problems, *anyone* causes trouble they get thrown out no matter what they came in on". ;-)
Cheers, T i m
That sound uncannily like what my maths teacher used to say when we used to moan about having use slide rules and not being allowed to use calculators.
You might have a point there.
Matt
To be fair, you did a 70 mile journey and did 60 miles of it after the fuel reserve warning light came on.
Nice planning.
Not when my SIL is cooking. ;-)
Have you never been led down a single track road by your Garmin and watched the ETA receding into the distance when the alternative single carriageway road is only marginally longer and much quicker?
Quite, but isn't hindsight a lovely thing. ;-).
Many motorcycles didn't / don't come with fuel gauges so until the light comes on you don't have an accurate idea of how much fuel you have left before it does. Mine didn't even have a light, just reserve taps.
We live in an area where petrol stations are regular and open nearly
24/7.We had ridden up to Dornoch (over 800 miles) with no issues (with loads of camps / stops / day trips and detours) and this was just a 'trip out' that day up to J.O.G. We started the trip with fairly full (if not full) tanks. (We returned with about 2000 miles on the clock and hadn't had any issues the 1500 miles on our Southern trip (L.E.) the year before).
We didn't remember seeing anything in Thurso nor going back towards J.O.G. so 'pushed on back to Dornoch as there weren't any 'certainties' behind us (there were a couple of petrol stations but this was a Sunday evening and they weren't open).
We did pass a couple of petrol stations on the road back but again, closed.
We had AA recovery and mobile phones.
The BMW had enough fuel to get back to civilisation.
The road wasn't completely deserted (but close).
So I feel we had done enough under the circumstances and the only things we could have done differently would have been:
Filled up on the way until we could guarantee we had enough fuel to get back. However, we hadn't planned the trip to Dunnet when we got to J.O.G.
Not gone on from J.O.G. to Thurso (well, we actually went to Dunnet Head but carried on as it was a quicker way back, ~70 v ~90 miles) and we both would probably have made it back ok.
Not gone out for a trip returning on a Sunday evening in the NE most part of Scotland.
Filled the trailer up with petrol. ;-)
Left the Mrs where she ran out as a lesson to her to get a bike that holds more than 3 gallons and does more than 50 mpg.
Had a GPS with us. 'Find > Nearest > Fuel / Services'.
We may have actually made it back with the surplus fuel from the BMW as I think we were only ~20 miles away and I could have had a couple of gallons left if we had filled up and done the same miles together (we had been doing). 1 gallon each would have got us back easily, had we been exactly sure where we were (we had a map but with us but because we knew the route we hadn't been taking much notice of it).
But you live and learn eh. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
No. ;-)
Most of my garmins have 'Vehicle type' as one of the setup fields and we would normally have that set to 'Car' (even when on the motorbikes). This ensures it wouldn't take you down one way streets or ant road unsuitable for 'cars or bigger'. Secondly there is a slider re how often you don't mind changing road types and another that goes from tracks to Motorways. You can also tell it to avoid toll roads, ferries, U turns etc.
If you put it on 'Pedestrian' then it will give you one way streets (the wrong way if need be) and allies and tracks etc.
You also have 'Shortest / Fastest / Helicopter etc. ;-)
Many of the Garmins also allow you to display a maximum number of a huge array of variables including a basic compass pointer to distance to next turn / final to Dawn / Dusk and Altitude etc.
Cheers, T i m
I used to walk up and down in front of the school, pretending to make notes in a notebook. Wearing a navy blue all weather coat.
They soon moved on. Occasionally told me 'I have a smaller child with me so I have to do this'; I often had too, but I still parked properly.
I used to have a Garmin sat-nav (Nuvi something or other) as I was already familiar with a Garmin handheld and wanted one that would take grid references rather than awkward lat/long. Despite having it set on fastest route it used to drive me made with its diversions onto single track roads which the program assumed I could drive as if they were single carriageways. AFAICT it was predicting something like twice the average speed that I could actually achieve unlike its performance on better roads where I could usually arrive ahead of the initial ETA if I didn't need to stop. I eventually gave it away and bought a Tom-Tom which has been much better at finding the best route and provides an ETA that allows me to take breaks every hour or two.
After the rubbish Garmin I was impressed by the Tom-Tom which even gave directions at the appropriate time rather than so far in advance that making the next turn was often the wrong option.
I don't think mine had anything other than fastest, shortest and off road. I never intended to use it off road but occasionally some of the tracks it directed me down (which I baulked at) should have been classified as such. I never got round to checking but those were probably BOATs.
Much of that can be found on any sat-nav. One feature on the Tom-Tom that I don't recall from the Nuvi is a continuous readout of the speed together (most of the time) with the speed limit currently in force.
Yes, I have one of those .. I'd call it 'one of their later consumer range'.
Ok.
Hmm?
Strange. I can't say I've had it that bad. I don't thing it's 'navigation' is as good as some of their older models though.
Daughter was using a Garmin Nuvi up the A1 to Scotland (from Nth London) and at about half way and at a rest stop she texted said it had an ETA of 21:15. At 21:15 the phone rang telling us she had just arrived? I can't say I've /ever/ have a Gamin offer an ETA that was changed much over the entire journey, outside of traffic holdups or us making informal diversions or stops etc.
Different brands / models do vary re that sort of thing I agree. Again, my Garmins give instructions at varying distances from the turn dependant on your speed. It often does so about 3 times (ignoring the 'next turn' prompt that could be hundred of miles ahead ) once, far enough out to consider lanes, once again as you near the junction and another at the junction itself?
Yup, the Nuvi is a cheap, 'consumer' model (I paid just over £100 for mine and it has bluetooth and lifetime free traffic support). The Garmin GPS III+ I bought 10 years earlier was around £499 then and didn't even have autorouting!. ;-)
Did you update the device or maps online out of interest?
I'll have to take your word for that. I've not even got anything like that on some of my Garmins (especially the Nuvi).
Yup, both on mine, along with traffic camera locations / warnings etc.
I find the Nuvi fine for everyday driving jobs. It's my only GPS with full postcode search and so far it's not missed a beat , taken me the wrong way or off a junction that doesn't exist. Daughter has even used it for some GeoCaching although it's not really ideal for that (my GPS V or Quest might have been better being more 'old skool').
Horses for courses though etc. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
p.s. I'd like to get a TomTom (second hand, what model?) as I don't think you can really decide until you have tried something in earnest. Plus it's always interesting to see how the other side does it (and why I also use OSX and Linux). ;-)
Between Thurso and Dornoch, even with GPS, you won't find many petrol stations. (Can't find what doesn't exist!) There are even fewer between Thurso and Durness.
I assure you that that is what occurred. They may well have changed the software in latter models but not on mine and I did check periodically for software updates. Garmin also had a bug in the early etrex summit that they denied for years before eventually refusing to do anything about it. The handhelds at least up to the mid 00s which had car direction software had the same problem as my Nuvi with single track roads.
But do you ever get onto single track roads?
I never bothered with a gps until they turned SA off so the etrex summit was the first model I had (£263 in 2000).
FWIW I don't call £300 cheap. The Nuvi (in 06) was more than twice the price of the Tom-Tom I replaced it with three and a half years later.
I checked for software updates but not maps. Roads don't change very fast and maps seem inordinately expensive compared with the cost of a brand new sat-nav.
I have had mine for over 18 months now. I can't find the instruction book to check the exact model but it is one of the XL range, no doubt superseded by now.
I have just got a new handheld (memorymap adventurer 2800) and am having trouble coming to terms with a very different animal to my previous handhelds but after the Nuvi fiasco I vowed never to buy another Garmin again.
What annoys me about my TomTom (old version running on an iPAQ) is that it says "Exit ahead" when it says it before the exit before the one that it is refering to. If you follow... It really can't cope with junction on the M8 in Glasgow somewhere where two slip roads leave to completely different places within a couple of hundred yards of each other.
Hunreds of miles? The longest I have seen to "next turn" is around 70 miles when joining the M6 at Penrith and heading south ("next turn" is the M55). I might be able to push it up to 100 miles where the M74 turns into the M6 south of Grenta. I wonder what the longest "next turn" is in the UK?
Quite!
Well, we tend to watch where we are going when motorcycling so could easily have missed them as we weren't actually looking for any at that point (if you know what I mean). *Normally*, with her bike being the determiner of petrol stops, even when it goes onto reserve we would find a fuel stop within range of her reserve (and she would have given me the signal at the first blink of the reserve light coming on). ;-)
However (and ignoring our first introduction to midges in the peak district and then again at Fort William and Fort Augustus) we both agree we had the best motorcycling time we have had so far. The roads were both beautiful and in good condition (not been dug up by the services since being laid), the scenery were breathtaking and the other drivers seemed much more tolerant, courteous and understanding that we have found nearly anywhere, moving over onto the 'let people past' area, even if we didn't want to pass. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
p.s. We were heading for the BMW club rally at Dornoch and happened beside a couple on another BM at some temporary traffic lights alongside Loch Lochy. We pulled over for a better chat and it turns out they were an American couple touring Europe. We told them about the rally, said they would be welcome and to our surprise were there before we were! It wasn't quite as it first seemed ... it turned out he was a golf nut and when I mentioned 'Dornoch' the penny dropped for him. He got half a round in while we went round the town with his Mrs. The club paid their camping fees as special guests and they won the 'greatest distance traveled trophy. ;-)
Sorry Roger, I wasn't suggesting I didn't believe you there, just that that hadn't happened to me? ;-)
Fair enough. Many don't and wonder why they have problems (that have already been fixed etc).
Not good. The only time I had anything that actually affected me was a version that was unstable. Luckily I took the Libretto netbook with me and was able to 'downgrade back to a stable version on the trip.
As in 'un requested and 'not really suitable for a car'? No, not really? And I do often set it to 'shortest' and would say the Nuvi is even more reserved about what that means than the previous models. ie, I many know an ever shorter cut through even narrower (but still reasonable 'country lanes') than it advises. The previous GPS had finer settings re the vehicles so if you chose 'Cycle' you would get tracks and lanes etc.
I 'suffered' that for quite a while but never really found it an issue (it was always far more accurate than I needed).
I was really referring to the Nuvis (at £100 ish. Stepdaughters one was £89 or summat) and that's how these things go I guess (often getting cheaper till they nearly become disposable or free with Cornflakes).
True, however on most of my Garmins I qualified for a 'free' map upgrade as I bought them within a certain time of them releasing a new map. I have bought a couple of map upgrades but then in those days you could use them for up to 3 machines.
Excluding the Nuvi, all of mine are waterproof of course (for use when cycling / motorcycling). And I know you can put them in bags and tankbags etc but there is no substitute for something 'designed' to be used outside. ;-)
If you fancy a look at what options you could set on the my GPS V ... (I've kept it because it's small, waterproof and runs on AA batteries).
Glasgow's probably best avoided anyway, at all costs.
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