Issues/problems with install of map 945

[marcolou]

Thank you canderson...works like a charm !!!

 

[canderson]

Good move on the backup, Marcolou. Don't forget to make a fresh one each time you do a major update!

 

[Giuliano Rescaldani]

Yesterday I received an official answer from TomTom Support UK (TomTom Support Italy is a fake) and they told me that Western_Europe will be divided in zones for 950, as MVL anticipated few days ago. At this point, I assume Western_Europe is a "full map" that will be divided in zones. In other words, Full_Europe doesn't exist and Western_Europe is not a Zone. This is in contrast with http://uk.support.tomtom.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/12185/kw/zones that lists Xxxxx_Europe as zones! In addition, my present Western_Europe coverage is slightly different from Western_Europe in that web page. I think there is some confusion in this area!

By the way, I absolutely don't understand why TomTom doesn't create one map for each country and allows the customers to load only the countries he/she needs. Somewhere I read that a smaller map makes TomTom faster (not sure this is true).

 

[canderson]

A little history, Giuliano:

TomTom has tended to provide as much map as would fit within a given memory model. Back quite some years, for example, there were some units with so little memory that a UK/ROI map was all that would reasonably fit. At the same time, there were higher end units with (wow!) a whole 2GB of memory available, and even one with 4GB available so as to hold both Western Europe and North America at the same time. Now, a 4GB unit barley holds either of those. Not all units had an SD or uSD card slot that might have helped, and this is back when 2GB was the maximum card size anyway (SDHC had not yet been made available). In any case, a map could never be split between internal and external (card) memory, so the maximum remained 2GB for that time.

'Europe' as a whole was always to big for any of the units they were selling, and that is why they provided some overlapping European maps ... Western, Central and Eastern. They also supplied some regional maps (e.g., the UK/ROI or Iberia or similar) for the smallest models, or as add-on maps for those outside of those areas. But the cost to buy these ala carte was expensive.

Meanwhile, maps like Western Europe continued to grow with more roads and more detail, and then those didn't fit, not even in 2GB units. Understand that different models got somewhat different maps with more or less detail, and TomTom kept trying to find ways to make maps fit into the older models. It was at that time that 'zones' were created to segment the older map sets into yet smaller pieces. TomTom figured you had paid for access to, for example, all the countries in a Western Europe map, so they decided that they owed you a way to access them, even if all of Western Europe wouldn't fit into your unit at the same time. Later, this happened in North America as well. Where they used to be able to fit Canada/USA/Mexico/Guam into a single 2GB map, that is no longer the case for many units, and they started to segment North America into 'zones' as well.

The newer Nav4 units (even the less expensive ones) are now 8GB, and will again hold a full Western Europe or North America map -- for now. Who knows? There may be a day when they also grow so large as to require an external 16GB uSD card. That's another difference: all Nav4 devices have an external uSD card slot.

There are several reasons why TomTom has not always provided many small maps. [Problem: I have some things I need to do right away, and I can't finish this now. But here's the start of it:]

First, it is necessary to understand that a while back, neither TomTom nor Garmin owned a map making business. TomTom would buy their maps from Teleatlas, and Garmin would buy their maps from Navteq. Both Teleatlas and Navteq had other customers to service as well. It wasn't until some years into the program (2008) that TomTom bought Teleatlas. Garmin did not choose to try to buy Navteq, and in fact, in 2007, Nokia began discussions to buy Navteq (possibly why TomTom was prompted to purchase Teleatlas?) and that deal was also completed in 2008.

 

[mvl]

My summary:
- Tomtom PNDs still use an outdated map mindset, from the last decade, when maps were expensive to make and space was small. They cling to the outdated idea of selling many regional maps
- Many of the regional cuts were based on the internal memory that was available/commonplace when a model was launched. The zones are cuts of the regions when maps got bigger than the launch-device space. So Western Europe and "the western zone of Europe" are separate concepts
- The modern map is continuous, global, and single-priced. Tomtom was slow to move to this because they never had enough budget/expertise to do much since 2008, after being forced to layoff all their experts to pay the debt of buying Teleatlas right before the economic collapse.
- Tomtom is finally coming around to the modern age, their latest portable nagivation business model is now a single recurring subscription to the global Tomtom "experience", including maps/traffic/navigation worldwide. They launched this business model on Tomtom for Android, as PNDs are now a waste of hardware and going the way of the dinosaur. It's not continuous just yet, but I expect that once phone memory space catches up in the next 1-2 years, Tomtom maps will become global/continuous too.

 

[canderson]

@mvl

Normally, I understand where you're coming from, but even with the phone-as-GPS mindset, I really am not following you this time.

Whether or not TomTom has an outdated map mindset or not, the fact that older units can be as small as 512MB with no uSD card means that some accommodation has to be made for them. At one time not that long ago, you could fit the entire North America or Western Europe map fairly nicely on a 2GB unit, POI and all. Discounting all of the silliness that has bloated current Nav4 maps (3D renditions of well known landmarks and buildings, for example), none of that has been added to maps for older models. Increase in size has been strictly a function of the addition of good and useful information (e.g., look at the number of roads with IQR data now). That's the immediate topic of discussion for the OP and others. TomTom is doing what they can to break down maps into smaller and smaller pieces, and making them 'switchable' for users, in order to deal with the memory issue.

Moving on to your 'modern map' being 'continuous, global and single-priced' -- yes, it's single priced. What you are describing is free, apart from the price of a connection and data plan.

Any device with a 'continuous' map is using a cell phone, and those maps are typically free. No other PND supplier is doing business any differently than TomTom. None of them even have a 'full global map' available, much less do most of their units (even current ones) support the memory necessary to hold one. We're talking the difference between dynamic vs. static maps -- the former must be made available OTA to match the immediate demands of the user's app. The latter is what you find on any handheld or automotive PND (that you can buy at retail).that doesn't include cellular service, and has to bring its maps along.

Your comment about TomTom and Android really perplexes me. TomTom's Android business is the same. Pick your map in the price of the app. Different prices for different regions according to your needs -- same as now on their PND. But don't try to pick the world. That's not an option.
https://play.google.com/store/search?q="tomtom international"&c=apps

 

[mvl]

PNDs are a long way from the storage capacity for single global map. Phones are 3x the cost and are finally getting the close to the necessary storage hardware. Once 128GB becomes standard, customers can devote the 50GB needed for a global offline map.

Regarding the pricing, it's just the end of pay-per-map and the transition to pay per month. Tomtom GO Mobile for Android (currently in only 5-ish countries) uses that model.

 

[Abb0]

Hey Team,

It's been quite a while since I've been on here as I haven't had the need to use the TT for a long time.
Anyway, I recently got the notification that the Spring map had been released so I thought it was time to update my XXL. When I tried to update, the map Share updated as did a couple of other small items but no Spring map. When I tried to manually update again I got the message that my TT was up to date plus TT Home has a message in the top right corner that my map is up to date.
Any ideas why? I've never had problems with the map updates in the past.

Cheers
Paul

 

[dhn]

You might want to call CS:

United States
866 486 6866

Monday - Friday: 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. EDT
Saturday: 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. EDT

The latest map is 945.

 

[Abb0]

Thanks. I was having a look around and found this thread:
https://www.tomtomforums.com/threads/what-is-the-latest-map-for-a-xxl550tm.30749/
I followed the instructions in there about going to "Manage My XXL" and then to "Remove Items From Computer". That worked for me as well.

Thanks again.

Paul