az99 wrote:
louiskathy wrote:
Several years back I bought a LIVE 1535M TOMTOM for cheap... on sale for $89.
I have the same POS unit. More than once my wife has grabbed it from me while I was throwing it out the window. The routing of that unit is HORRENDOUS. And yes it is updated.
The other day on a long trip we tried my wife's smartphone GPS app. It successfully got us around Wash DC. Always a failure with the TomTom and my Xcite built in.
I would say the stand alone GPS unit will soon be a memory like the cassette tapes.
Love the part where you want to toss it out the window and your wife stops you. I have a good imagination. There is entertainment value right there.
My first face to face meeting was in 2009. We were on the gulf side of Florida... rented a house boat and after we got out in the gulf our friend turned on her GPS to see what it would do. LOL what a riot!! "There are no roads here. Go Back the way you came."
I'd heard so many horror stories about GPS devices taking RVing people on back roads instead of main roads that i didn't want one but by the fall of 2012 I was interested enough to buy that $89-on-the-sale-table TOMTOM just to see if I wanted a better one. The very first thing we did once we got it charged and the maps updated was program it to take us to a certain place and then we deliberately went the opposite way she instructed us to turn JUST to see what she would do. We had $89 worth of fun. It's amazing how many ways there are to tell you that you are going the wrong way, turn around or make a U turn. She starts out by giving instructions to make 3 left turns and a right to get headed in the right direction. Then she instructs to make a legal U turn when possible. Then her voice goes up a tone and she instructs to just "Make a U turn." I even think the "U" shaped arrow gets wider and wider and the yellow border around the red arrow gets larger as well.
When we started using it in 2012 we only got one arrow indicating which direction to exit the interstate... now it shows 3 arrows side-by-side and they pulsate... then the screen goes from showing the highway... to show JUST the exit lanes with the 3 indicating arrows. Over time, this GPS has evolved to a higher level of direction giving based on past communication attempts.
I have not done the comparison between CoPilot and the GPS yet. But I still plan on a trip to Portland just to see what the head to head competition brings out in them.
Oh, and Gary, LIVE SERVICES allows me to use the GPS to search for area attractions, gas stations, gas prices, phone numbers for groups of things, (like area restaurants). A week ago I didn't have a smart phone so LIVE SERVICES was a good way to get that info. Now here, my smart phone out does the GPS. I have unlimited 2G data so I should always be able to use my Smart Phone for these types of area searches.
The only LIVE SERVICE that I think I would miss is the real-time incident indications we get on our screen when emergency vehicles or tow trucks are sent to a point on our route. That's come in handy a few times. Usually the traffic flow will slow shortly after we get the alert. Gives us time to get ready rather than just having to react to traffic.
