- Joined
- Sep 26, 2007
- Messages
- 7
- TomTom Model(s)
- Go 910
I purchased a Go 910 off of eBay earlier this week. It showed up this afternoon, and I thought I'd create a thread about my experiences so far.
My 910 is refurbished, by TomTom. I am a little disappointed at the quality of the refurbishing. The case of the 910 is scuffed and perhaps a bit dirty. The screen itself is great, though. The most disheartening part was that out of the box, my 910 wouldn't connect to either my Mac or my WinXP computers. The accessories all appear to be brand new.
I've got a '98 Bravada SUV, and had been wondering about how to best mount the 910. I wanted it on the left hand side of the wheel, towards the lower left corner of the dash. It took a little trial and error to make that happen. The suction cup mount didn't seem to like the slightly more curved surface of the windshield there. What I ended up doing was putting the mount six or so inches towards the center (where the glass was flat enought), then locked it at the first stop. I was able to slide the attached mount over to where I wanted it, then I twisted it to the second stop. After an hour or so of driving, it seems secure and in a great spot. There's a bit of vibration, but not enough to cause the mount to shift.
I should mention that I live in MN. We've got a statute prohibiting mounting objects on our windshield that obscure the driver's field of view. I'll take my chances arguing that before a judge if and when the time comes. The 910 is no more of an obstruction than my State Parks sticker is.
Setting up the 910 was super simple. Nothing tough about that at all.
For my first trip, I went from the suburb to the city. About a 15 mile route that I know very well. It was a good test for the 910, as there are many potential routes. It took me a good year and a half to really figure out what route I like best. That's not the route the 910 chose, however. It picked a route that is much more conventional, and what most people driving between the two points would likely do (provided that they don't have much experience with the other possibilities).
I drove my normal route, and let the 910 adjust. It did a really nice job of that, with one major exception. The re-routes were fast and largely accurate. The problem was the that the 910's maps are incomplete. My favorite little road, which lets me skirt a slow residential area, isn't correctly mapped. The 910 has no Interstate entrances or exits for the road. Taking that road shaves a good five to eight minutes off of my trip.
The 910's directions were very clear and easy to understand. The speaker was loud enough that I could hear it easily with the stereo on and the window cracked open. I was impressed with that! The map was easy to digest while driving, too.
Before I made the return trip, I paired my Motorola V195 with the 910 via Bluetooth. Super easy to do. I had the 910 download my phonebook from the phone. My only complaint there was that I didn't receive any notification that the phonebook transfer was complete. It takes more than a couple of minutes, and it would have been nice to be told when it was done.
I made a couple of calls with the speakerphone on the way home. Each person was easy for me to understand, and I suspect I was easy to understand, too. Neither of them said anything about me sounding unusual. The one thing that wasn't entirely intuitive to me was how to end the telephone calls.
One thing that I really, really liked is the remote control. Yes, my 910 is within easy reach. But it's so much easier and less distracting to just use the remote. I've gotten spoiled with an in-car remote for my iPod the last few years, so this is just second nature to me.
The iPod integration and the remote is really what sold me on the 910. I like the idea of being able to easily run everything through the car stereo, and not having to give up remote control of my tunes. My iPod cable should show up sometime next week, and I'm anxious to see if this will go together the way I'm imagining it. I haven't been able to find much information online about that.
Somewhere near the top of this post I mentioned that I couldn't connect my 910 to the computers. I had to do a paper-clip reset once I got home. No big deal, but I really expected better than that right out of the box. My guess is that the unit was refurbished because of this, and it's disappointing to know that the problem wasn't checked (or if it wasn't a problem, that this slipped by) during the refurbishing. I'd be cautious about buying a refurbished 910, unless you're saving enough money to make it worth the potential hassle.
I've got the 6.5 maps and software. One of the things that almost pushed me to Garmin was that TomTom just is not clear about their upgrade/update policies. Any careful GPS consumer is naturally going to want to know these things, particularly when there's a product transition going on. TomTom should clarify this, particularly what with MapShare coming out.
MapShare is something I'm looking forward to. I want to be able to add my favorite little shortcut that's missing, and I want to correct some of the street names. It reads the main road near my home as being "County road blah blah" rather than the street name that everyone knows it by. The street name is also how all of the signage is done.
Hopefully some smart person at TomTom will figure out a way to make use of the moments when we all go "off of the road" in urban areas. If that were included in the data sent back to TomTom and their map supplier, it would certainly be easy to use it as an alert that an area needs to be reviewed. With MapShare this could make for significant, fast improvements to the product.
A picky part about this for me is that the POIs only have the first word of the POI capitalized. It just looks sloppy. How hard is it to get that sort of thing right? Not very, I think.
So far I'm feeling good about my 910 purchase. It's not quite everything I'd hoped it would be, but overall I'm impressed. The sensible side of me is still telling me that I should have bought the Nuvi 660, but the geeky technical side of me likes all of the little extras that the 910 has.
The first real test for my 910 will be on Tuesday, when I travel someplace I've never been before.
My 910 is refurbished, by TomTom. I am a little disappointed at the quality of the refurbishing. The case of the 910 is scuffed and perhaps a bit dirty. The screen itself is great, though. The most disheartening part was that out of the box, my 910 wouldn't connect to either my Mac or my WinXP computers. The accessories all appear to be brand new.
I've got a '98 Bravada SUV, and had been wondering about how to best mount the 910. I wanted it on the left hand side of the wheel, towards the lower left corner of the dash. It took a little trial and error to make that happen. The suction cup mount didn't seem to like the slightly more curved surface of the windshield there. What I ended up doing was putting the mount six or so inches towards the center (where the glass was flat enought), then locked it at the first stop. I was able to slide the attached mount over to where I wanted it, then I twisted it to the second stop. After an hour or so of driving, it seems secure and in a great spot. There's a bit of vibration, but not enough to cause the mount to shift.
I should mention that I live in MN. We've got a statute prohibiting mounting objects on our windshield that obscure the driver's field of view. I'll take my chances arguing that before a judge if and when the time comes. The 910 is no more of an obstruction than my State Parks sticker is.
Setting up the 910 was super simple. Nothing tough about that at all.
For my first trip, I went from the suburb to the city. About a 15 mile route that I know very well. It was a good test for the 910, as there are many potential routes. It took me a good year and a half to really figure out what route I like best. That's not the route the 910 chose, however. It picked a route that is much more conventional, and what most people driving between the two points would likely do (provided that they don't have much experience with the other possibilities).
I drove my normal route, and let the 910 adjust. It did a really nice job of that, with one major exception. The re-routes were fast and largely accurate. The problem was the that the 910's maps are incomplete. My favorite little road, which lets me skirt a slow residential area, isn't correctly mapped. The 910 has no Interstate entrances or exits for the road. Taking that road shaves a good five to eight minutes off of my trip.
The 910's directions were very clear and easy to understand. The speaker was loud enough that I could hear it easily with the stereo on and the window cracked open. I was impressed with that! The map was easy to digest while driving, too.
Before I made the return trip, I paired my Motorola V195 with the 910 via Bluetooth. Super easy to do. I had the 910 download my phonebook from the phone. My only complaint there was that I didn't receive any notification that the phonebook transfer was complete. It takes more than a couple of minutes, and it would have been nice to be told when it was done.
I made a couple of calls with the speakerphone on the way home. Each person was easy for me to understand, and I suspect I was easy to understand, too. Neither of them said anything about me sounding unusual. The one thing that wasn't entirely intuitive to me was how to end the telephone calls.
One thing that I really, really liked is the remote control. Yes, my 910 is within easy reach. But it's so much easier and less distracting to just use the remote. I've gotten spoiled with an in-car remote for my iPod the last few years, so this is just second nature to me.
The iPod integration and the remote is really what sold me on the 910. I like the idea of being able to easily run everything through the car stereo, and not having to give up remote control of my tunes. My iPod cable should show up sometime next week, and I'm anxious to see if this will go together the way I'm imagining it. I haven't been able to find much information online about that.
Somewhere near the top of this post I mentioned that I couldn't connect my 910 to the computers. I had to do a paper-clip reset once I got home. No big deal, but I really expected better than that right out of the box. My guess is that the unit was refurbished because of this, and it's disappointing to know that the problem wasn't checked (or if it wasn't a problem, that this slipped by) during the refurbishing. I'd be cautious about buying a refurbished 910, unless you're saving enough money to make it worth the potential hassle.
I've got the 6.5 maps and software. One of the things that almost pushed me to Garmin was that TomTom just is not clear about their upgrade/update policies. Any careful GPS consumer is naturally going to want to know these things, particularly when there's a product transition going on. TomTom should clarify this, particularly what with MapShare coming out.
MapShare is something I'm looking forward to. I want to be able to add my favorite little shortcut that's missing, and I want to correct some of the street names. It reads the main road near my home as being "County road blah blah" rather than the street name that everyone knows it by. The street name is also how all of the signage is done.
Hopefully some smart person at TomTom will figure out a way to make use of the moments when we all go "off of the road" in urban areas. If that were included in the data sent back to TomTom and their map supplier, it would certainly be easy to use it as an alert that an area needs to be reviewed. With MapShare this could make for significant, fast improvements to the product.
A picky part about this for me is that the POIs only have the first word of the POI capitalized. It just looks sloppy. How hard is it to get that sort of thing right? Not very, I think.
So far I'm feeling good about my 910 purchase. It's not quite everything I'd hoped it would be, but overall I'm impressed. The sensible side of me is still telling me that I should have bought the Nuvi 660, but the geeky technical side of me likes all of the little extras that the 910 has.
The first real test for my 910 will be on Tuesday, when I travel someplace I've never been before.
