Love - hate relationship with my TT

[Old Baldy]

Man, sometimes I just HATE this damned thing (TT 1 New Edition with plenty of POI loaded)

Today, I have to get to one of the largest hospitals in the Detroit area, Providential Hospital in Southfield, MI to spend the day with my daughter who broke her arm badly and will be in the hospital for 3 days.

Before I continue, yesterday we were in my wife's Suzuki SUV and she's running her old Garmin C330 (the one that always seems to find a better route than my TT1 in this area when running side-by-side).

Yesterday, we searched her C330 POI for "Providential" - and it immediately found the nearer, smaller, Providential Hospital in Novi (a couple of miles from our house) and it also found the larger Providential Hospital in Southfield that we were heading to....no problem at all. So, we followed those directions and it got us there efficiently (as it always seems to do).

Now, realize that my sense of direction is rather weak at best, and that as I wasn't really paying attention to the route yesterday, when we wanted to return to the same hospital today, this time in my truck, and using my TomTom 1, I thought....no big deal, we'll simply search the TT POI for that Providential hospital and we'll be good to go.

Well....not quite!

I first selected "POI in City" because I knew that the hospital was in the Southfield area, and then scanned through the hospitals and clinics it found.....and no luck! WTF???? One of the largest hospitals is NOT in the POI database? How can that be? As we were already now on the road, I could not look up the direct street address of the hospital to enter it directly.

But....SURELY the TT has this large hospital in the database? I told him to try again....."POI in City", then select "hospitals" then scan through the screens. No luck again!

Now, I'm puzzled...and a little frustrated.

So, I say...select "POI near you" and then hospitals and try again. Now, we realize that the TT displays only the first 3 or so screens of matches, in ascending distance from our location, and as the database returns too many possible matches, it stops displaying the hospitals before it gets to the large hospital we want to drive to!

So, THAT doesn't work.

So, I then say....OK, instead of scanning the hospitals screen by screen, go back to "POI in City", enter "Southfield" as the city, then select "Hospitals" then enter "Providential" and see what we get. Again...a number of matches, but nothing in 9 Mile Rd, which is where I know this hospital was.

Man, now I'm getting REAL pissed with this thing!

So, now I say search for the word "Hospital" instead of "Providential" in case it's called something else in the TT database.

Still no luck.

Now, on top of this all,,,,the MOUNT would NOT stay stuck to the windscreen. I tried wetting it, cleaning the screen, even warming the suction cup up with the heater....and it kept popping off the screen and falling onto the dash.

So now I'm so pissed that we can't find this huge freaking hospital in the TT POI and it won't stay stuck on the glass, that I throw the TT into the glove box and ride around until we find the hospital. Luckily, my wife remembered some of the route and we found the hospital relatively easily, despite my lack of directional intuition.

Finally, after we GET to the hospital, I see the "H" icon on the map, and think OK, I should be able to touch that "H" icon and see the details or address pop-up (as you can with some other satnav systems such as the Copilot, etc)

Well, of course the icon is displayed on the screen, but there is no active link to the database to actually see what the details are! Silly me.

Oh, and BTW, the reason the TT could not find the hospital in Southfield is because it is coded under a different city name! I've never heard of the damned place, and would NEVER have been able to find it because when you select "POI in City" it filters the POI for ONLY that city, and not according to distance FROM that city center as one would expect. It didn't matter if that hospital was literally across the road, if that city was coded differently in TT it would never have found it via that option.

So, you can't use the "POI in City" option if you don't know which city that POI happens to be coded in (and don't assume it's in the city you and everyone else in the universe THINKS it's in, if it's not!).....and you can't find it via the "POI near you" if the TT finds more than 3 screens of matches before it gets to the one you actually want because you will never see it either, and you can't find it via the "POI near destination" when that IS the actual destination......and so unless you're prepared to scan the TT screen map in circles until you may locate the damned place and then find the cross-section roads or something, I don't know how else you can get the TT to navigate you there. I'm SURE I must be missing something here.....pls tell me WHAT!


Man, it's times like this that I really and truly do believe that while TomTom offers some real snazzy features and cool things, in terms of truly "getting the basics right first" they are sometimes far behind some of the others.

Look, I still like the TT....it brings out the geek in me, but sometimes it really does bring out the love-hate relationship with me. I HATE to admit it to my wife, but that #$%@^ garmin of hers is so damned EFFICIENT at the basics. She did well today, to keep from rubbing my nose in it, because I'm always harping on at her about how my TT is better than her ugly old C330, and sometimes she could really rub my nose in it but just smiles knowingly to myself (which seems even worse!)

Oh well....I guess none of these devices is perfect, but I wish that TT would just get some of the real important things (to me) right first and THEN add all the really cool features.

[/vent-off]

Thanks for listening guys. Needed to release some steam.

 

[96ss]

Couldn't you just 'navigate to recent destination' or was that not available on your unit. I have noticed this on my unit also, but I am not quite as "navigationally challenged" as you are. I just tried entered the POI as I got closer to where I was going. But your unit does sound pretty crappy in as far as POI's go.

 

[Gilbert]

I understand how you felt. Locally, a good number of the small municipalities were amalgamated and some refused to be amalgamated. I can't remember all the details of which were and were not.

What comes to my mind is that I turn off all POI warnings except for radar and contacts. If I was faced with your problem of finding an unknown hospital, I would get the Hospital warning on and simply browse the map. Of course, I would have some idea where it is located and look for the ?H? identifications on the map with the zoom in and out fonction. I'm under the impression it could be found that way... Don't worry, I often slap my forehead at not having thought of an alternate way of doing something and discover a simple way of doing it. I hope I remember my solution if I ever get into that situation...

 

[Old Baldy]

Couldn't you just 'navigate to recent destination' or was that not available on your unit. I have noticed this on my unit also, but I am not quite as "navigationally challenged" as you are. I just tried entered the POI as I got closer to where I was going. But your unit does sound pretty crappy in as far as POI's go.

If I'd been to the location before with the TT, this would have been an option, of course, but it was the first time so this was not available.

 

[Old Baldy]

I understand how you felt. Locally, a good number of the small municipalities were amalgamated and some refused to be amalgamated. I can't remember all the details of which were and were not.

What comes to my mind is that I turn off all POI warnings except for radar and contacts. If I was faced with your problem of finding an unknown hospital, I would get the Hospital warning on and simply browse the map. Of course, I would have some idea where it is located and look for the ?H? identifications on the map with the zoom in and out fonction. I'm under the impression it could be found that way... Don't worry, I often slap my forehead at not having thought of an alternate way of doing something and discover a simple way of doing it. I hope I remember my solution if I ever get into that situation...

The thing is...even if you KNOW which general area the POI is in....the unit does not give you any information on the POI that is presented on the screen, other than it is some hospital. Whether it is the Providential Hospital or some walk-in clinic or some other hospital, you would have no clue - other than if you happen to know the address/streets that it is located on.

The POI search functionality is simply very weak, IMO.....and needs to be improved upon.

It would be VERY easy for TomTom to allow a search of POI by type "eg Hospital" and text entered (eg "providential") and display all matches in ascending distance from you or from a city of your choice, just as the garmin and other satnav systems do.

Additionally, it would be VERY easy for TomTom to make the displayed POIs on the rolling navigation screens as active links that if you touch the icon, displays the underlying information "Name of the POI, and address, etc.) and even an option to drive to that POI directly - just as so many other satnav systems do.

Anyway, hopefully TomTom will work to improve this search and POI display functionality to avoid these types of usage issues with their devices, so us TT fans can enjoy them even more!

 

[sidkaye]

A search on my GO 720 found "Providence Hospital" which is what I beleive you were looking for. Sometimes it helps to use the correct name and spelling. Sometimes just part of the name will return several results one of which may be correct and what I am searching for. The Tomtom like any computer does take a bit to learn how to use the "program"
Don't give up now!

Sidney

 

[Michael Quinlan]

I know I'm comparing apples to oranges here, since I'm using the Go 920, but to emulate what you were doing, I use Home to "operate my go", and the set my current location to Detroit, MI. The did Navigate to..., Point of interest, POI near you, Hospital/clinic, then started typing pro..., and the list of POIs quickly narrowed to include Providence Hospital. (I believe if I were actually using the Go directly - instead of through Home - I would have had to press Find before I started typing to narrow the list of POIs.

I also should mention that when I try to find a POI in city, my Go does find POIs that ARE NOT located within the city, but lists the POIs in distance order (I'm assuming this is distance from the city center, but it doesn't say).

Like I said though, apples to oranges. I don't know if any of this applies to your unit.

 

[Old Baldy]

A search on my GO 720 found "Providence Hospital" which is what I beleive you were looking for. Sometimes it helps to use the correct name and spelling. Sometimes just part of the name will return several results one of which may be correct and what I am searching for. The Tomtom like any computer does take a bit to learn how to use the "program"
Don't give up now!

Sidney

Not a question of spelling, and as a fairly long time user of at least 7 different satnav systems over the last 7 years and having owned the TT for a coupla years, I'd suggest that I'm fairly well versed in this little device's functionality.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned in my first post, there are LOTS of "Providence Hospitals" (which in itself seems to be a question mark) - just not the one I was looking for....and as I needed to get to that SPECIFIC Hospital because, well........ my daughter was at only that specific one, it really doesn't help me unless I can find that specific hospital....

 

[Old Baldy]

I know I'm comparing apples to oranges here, since I'm using the Go 920, but to emulate what you were doing, I use Home to "operate my go", and the set my current location to Detroit, MI. The did Navigate to..., Point of interest, POI near you, Hospital/clinic, then started typing pro..., and the list of POIs quickly narrowed to include Providence Hospital. (I believe if I were actually using the Go directly - instead of through Home - I would have had to press Find before I started typing to narrow the list of POIs.

I also should mention that when I try to find a POI in city, my Go does find POIs that ARE NOT located within the city, but lists the POIs in distance order (I'm assuming this is distance from the city center, but it doesn't say).

Like I said though, apples to oranges. I don't know if any of this applies to your unit.

Yes, Michael....my TT1 also displayed a lot of Providence Hospital matches, as per my post. Problem is that it did not display the one I ws actually looking for when using the "POI in City" filter, and it did not display the specific hospital I needed when using the "POI near you" filter....

I'm sure there are ways to eventually located the hospital, but suffice it to say that 3 reasonably intelligent and experienced satnav adults (my wife, my son and myself) could not find the correct hospital due to the filtering algorithms used by TomTom when we needed to....which means the device did not fulfill our basic navigational requirement for that specific trip, or for any other searches where one may not know the city that the POI is coded under (despite understanding the ACTUAL city name that the facility is located in - "Southfield" in this case - see http://www.stjohn.org/Providence/ ).

Remember, I was already on the road and relying on the device to find the place. We tried different searches for 15-20 minutes with no luck.
In the same situation, the Garmin found the hospital POI within the first quick search, and I never thought twice about it.

Anyway....I've had my little rant now, and was hoping that there may have been something simple that all 3 of us had overlooked in our search, but so far don't see any obvious solution to these kinds of problems (this is not the first time, of course) other than to either use another system or call the hospital and ask for explicit street address.....kinda defeating the purpose in a way.

[/rant off]

 

[Michael Quinlan]

I can understand your frustration. The first day I had my TomTom I had to find an address on Route 27, in North Brunswick, NJ. Unfortunately, Route 27 also goes by another name in this town - Lincoln Highway - which seems to be the ONLY name that Teleatlas knows the road by.

Since I knew the name and address of the office I was going to, I was able to work around the problem by searching for it as a POI. What I really found baffling at the time was that the address for the POI listing was on Route 27.

 

[Old Baldy]

I can understand your frustration. The first day I had my TomTom I had to find an address on Route 27, in North Brunswick, NJ. Unfortunately, Route 27 also goes by another name in this town - Lincoln Highway - which seems to be the ONLY name that Teleatlas knows the road by.

Since I knew the name and address of the office I was going to, I was able to work around the problem by searching for it as a POI. What I really found baffling at the time was that the address for the POI listing was on Route 27.

Yeah. I know that I'm on the verge of whining here (maybe past that stage, for some guys ) but it's only because I really do LIKE the TomTom that I wish they would spend the few hours necessary to change some of the basic stuff.
As an old programmer for 30 years, I know this is relatively easy stuff to change, because the data is all there and only some very minor differences in approach would make the POI searches much more effective, for instance.

As an example of the frustration I feel, I decided to do an actual comparison of my issue from this last weekend when I tried to find the hospital that my daughter was transferred to.

This is a long and boring post for many, I'm sure, so unless you're interested to see the differences in approach between the TomTom and the old Garmin that my wife loves so much, please ignore the rest of this thread.

I will start the comparo of the POI search differences in a new post below.

 

[Old Baldy]

***IGNORE this post/thread if you're bored with my whining about some of the TomTom POI search functionality compared to an old Garmin C330.***

Background

Need to find the large metropolitan hospital "Providence Medical Hospital" located in the city of Southfield, MI.

First, using the Garmin C330....

Initial C330 screen.

1. Click "Where To?"

2. Click the <Down Arrow>

3. Click the <Down Arrow> again.

4. Click "Hospitals"
(Now, I know that the "Providence Hospital" I'm looking for is approx. 20 miles from my location, so the first list of locations is too close-by)

5. Click the <Down Arrow>.

6. Still not there, so Click the <Down Arrow> again.
Ahhh...that looks like it at the bottom of the screen.

7. Click on "Providence Hospital 20.9M" to check
YUP! That's the one! I know it's on 9 Mile Rd

8. Click "Go!"
Voila! Directions to that large metropolitan hospital....and we got there on Friday evening no problem!

So, that is a total of 8 (EIGHT) clicks of the screen on the C330 and no "text entry" needed at all....and I'm on my way to the clearly correct destination hospital. Great stuff!

Next Post ---- my TomTom One New Edition......

 

[dhn]

If you navigate to-->poi-->hospital-->and click on 'find' and type in 'Providence', do the hospitals with that as part of the name NOT show up?

 

[Smokiewolf]

Baldy, I found that hospital, no problem, just like dhn said. I asked for all hospitals in Southfield, and it was on the list.

 

[Old Baldy]

OK, now the same POI search from my TomTom One.

Initial screen.

1. Click somewhere on screen.

2. Click "Navigate To..."

3. Click "Point of Interest"

4. CLick "POI near you"

5. Click "Hospital/Clinic"

6. Too close...so click <Down Arrow> for next screen

7. Still too close...so click <Down Arrow> for another screen

8. Still too close...so click <Down Arrow> again.

9. Still too close...so click <Down Arrow> again.
IMG]http://www.motodyn.com/gps/tomtom/P1050196.jpg[/IMG]

10. WHat? No more matches displayed! The hospital is further away than 9.2 miles....
So, try something else. I decide to go back and try the "POI in City" because I know the hospital is in the city of Southfield.
Click "Back"

11. Click "Back" again

12. OK, so now I'll try the "POI in City"

13. I need to change the state to "Michigan", so click on "TX"

14. Click on "Michigan"

15. Click on "Southfield"

16. Click on "Hospital/Clinic" again.

17. This is WEIRD. None of these locations are in the city of "Southfield!"
Regardless, they're too close...so click <Down Arrow> for next screen

18. Still not there...so click <Down arrow again>

19. and again....

20. and once again, no more locations are offered, so BACK we go.

More on next post

 

[Old Baldy]

Continued....


21. So now I decide to try to filter the name by entering "Providence"
Click the "Search" button.

22. Enter "Providence" search text

23. Hit "OK"

24. Not here yet, so click "Down Arrow"

25. AHHH!!! This is looking promising! Try the "Providence Med" at 19.9miles!

26. WHAT!!!! This hospital that is indicated at 19.9 miles out is nowhere NEAR 19.9 miles out. It is located around the corner from me! The TomTom is showing the WRONG hospital! See the address.
Remember, I'm looking for the Providence Hospital on 9 Mile Road in the city of Southfield.

Well, at this stage, I just give up, and throw the damned thing in the glove box.

Now, the WORST part of this whole thing is that the hospital DOES actualy exist in the TomTom POI database.

It is listed under a different city name, despite the fact that the hospital website and everyone locally knows it as in Southfield! Not only that, but the TomTom does not attempt to find the locations in ascending distance from the city you enter when you use the "POI in City" option - so again, if the location is literally across the road from the town hall of the city that you select, it will apparently never find the address.

To fix these POI searches to actually work, all they have to do is this:

1. Allow the TT to display more than 3 screens of matches by category when using the "POI near you" option

2. Make the POI search engine search for locations FROM the City that you select when using "POI in City", in ascending order of distance, regardless of whether that location is actually in the city you select. This helps when the city coded in TomTom is incorrect, or when you don;t know the exact city name but know a closeby large city and want to use that as the starting point for the search.

So....there we have it.

Thanks for letting me utter my thoughts on this. I hope that if enough folks talk about the improvements that could be made, we will see them in our favorite satnav systems in the future.

It's important to remember that ALL current systems have "problems" for some of us - as we have different views and preferences on what is important in a satnav system.

We can only try to understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of each system and choose the system that best meets our specific needs.

I'm likely going to try a Garmin Zumo (motorcycle specific) system as my next one, to see if it's as great as some folks say....or if I decide that my TT1 is not so damned bad after all!

 

[Old Baldy]

If you navigate to-->poi-->hospital-->and click on 'find' and type in 'Providence', do the hospitals with that as part of the name NOT show up?

YES!!!!

You have partially restored my faith in my TomTom for me!

I see now that I need to change my method of searching on the TT. I had a preference to NOT have to enter search text characters while driving on the highway, so always try to use the category searches based on "POI near you" or "POI in City" and then scroll through the list. This is fewer clicks and no keyboard entry, but obviously does not work as well on the TT.

When I tried your approach, by selecting the
1. "Navigate To"
2. "point of interest"
3. "POI near you"
4. then "Hospital/Clinic"
5. then "Find"
6. Then ENTER the text "Providence" and click the <Down Arrow>
7. The <Down Arrow? again
8. Then check the Hospital at 20.8Miles (wrong one)
9. then click <Right arrow> YES! This is the hospital I want.
10. Then <Select>
11. Directions to the right place!

Thanks a lot for the help. While this is 20 clicks or entry characters compared to the 8 of the C330, I can live with this approach, and will use it going forward.

Oh, and another thing! My apologies to TomTom as when I found the hospital listed at 19 miles out and said it's WRONG because that hospital was just around the corner from me.....well, it WOULD BE that distance because I was using the "POI in City" option and when starting from the distant location, anything close to me would be a number of miles. I should have been looking at the shorter distance locations as the starting point was close to the distant hospital! I had been thinking in terms of distance from ME, not distance from the city I had ENTERED. Typical damned silly user error!

This is a big help, and I'm glad I went to the effort to explain my problem, even if it seems embarrassingly simple now.

 

[Smokiewolf]

Hey, that's what we're here for, the embarassingly simple ! You're among friends!

 

[dhn]

Baldy.....

By default, any poi you select will show only the closest 28 items until you use the 'find' button. Also, when you DO use the 'find' the unit will searcch for the text string you enter in all positions of the poi; in other words, you don't have to type what you think is the beginning of the name. Example, type 'donal' in restaurants and you should see all million golden arches listed (<--ok, slight exaggeration )

 

[Old Baldy]

got it, thanks!

I will remember the key pointers here:

1. If I continue to use the category scans, realize it shows only the 1st 3 screens (28 matches?). Anything further than that needs a different approach.

2. If I use "POI in City" then remember that the mileage indicated for matches is NOT from my current location to those locations, but rather from that City center I selected to the locations (a key problem with me not finding that hospital, because I was looking for the hospital at around 20 miles out from ME!)

3. If I enter search text, remember that (2) above still applies when using "POI in City." It's probably best to use the "POI near you" option if I want to quickly scan matches based on a known approx distance from my current location.

On a separate but related note, I do wish that the locations displayed would show a "*" or something instead of the text string I entered, so that I could immediately see anything else in the name that is displayed to help differentiate the matches from each other. Consider if you enter a long search string such as "Providence" then when you get a whole long list of similar names starting with "Providence" and very little else on the screen, it's difficult to see enough to know if a specific location is the one you're looking for, unless you select that one, and go back and then select the next one, etc. Just a minor thing, but if it showed the rest of the name with a "*" for the text you entered, it would likely be easier to see the differences between the entries.