Sunday, November 29, 2009

Wish I knew why I can't post a subject line for my posts on this blog, sigh.

I just wanted to do a quick run down of my experience today with TomTom on iPhone 3G and their car dock. It rocks!

First off, the TomTom I had been carrying with me these past couple of years is not all that old. But the differences are like night and day.

The first thing I noticed is that the new software knows the speed limit on highways. This is a life saver for road warriors like me. I frequently pull into a new town in the evening and when I leave the airport I have no idea, zero, what the speed limit is on the highway I just got on. Sometimes it is 55, sometimes 65 and sometimes higher. But now TomTom tells me what my speed is and a slash and what the limit is. No more guessing.

The volume on the car dock was adequate for me. Granted, Hertz gave me a Prius this time so maybe it isn't a loud car to begin with. I haven't made a call so no idea how that sounds yet but I'm going to try later this week.

The charging while driving is nice but when I got to the hotel about 40 mins later I had about 76% charge. Granted I forgot to check what it was before I left. Still better than arriving at the hotel with only 20% charge left.

Lane assist on the beltways (i.e. I guess not major highways) was so-so. It did have white arrows for the lanes I should be in and black for the ones I should avoid so it was functional. But on the Interstate it was AWESOME. I've never had lane assist before. If you haven't and you travel weekly to strange places like I do then I highly recommend it.

Overall, considering the steep price between the TomTom iPhone 3G software and the cost of the additional car dock I still can not complain. It will serve me well and already has. I just wish I understood more about how IQ routing works and how they collect data and keep it updated in the software but perhaps I need to do more research. It did get me to the hotel today faster than the old TomTom did 2 weeks ago.