Hi Andy:
Thanks for responding. As I said I'm new to this...my 1st gps. I have a few friends who said they just took their unit out of box...plugged it in and away they went.
Yes of course you can do just that.... Probably the majority of people do.
The only problem comes if anything goes wrong. You can replace most of what's on there for free. But it's a hassle and if you lose your maps somehow, TT won't give you another copy, so you have to BUY them (about half the price of the whole sat nav!)
I guess things are also more likely to go wrong if you choose to update the device or add stuff to it rather than just leave it, so basically we always advise you make at least one backup, straight away before you do ANYTHING else.
Hopefully you'll never need it but forums like this are full of people with big problems that would be simple to fix if only they had made a backup.
When I asked about computer, thats what I meant...do I have to download tomtom home onto my computer so I can change things on computer instead of directly onto unit.
You can get by without using Home if all you want to do is add voices etc. IF you know where to get them from and where to copy and paste them to on the device.
Home is supposed to make it easy, but it's been such a crap program in the past that a lot of us old-timers just use it as little as possible, and especially we don't use it to make backups - always use Windows Explorer to do that (see the link in my first reply).
However, you do need to use Home if you want to buy a new map, and it's easiest to use it if you want to update the software.
Again though... many people just use what came out of the box and never update it.
I'm having a hard time navigating their web site...downloading a voice etc.
Don't use their website... Either use the "Add Traffic,voices, safety cameras etc." section of Home, or get the voice files from third-party websites and add them manually (we can give instructions for that if they aren't on those websites.
As far as charging goes...in the box I got an adapter to plug into car and an adapter to plug into computer. Do you mean that its slower plugging it into my computer for charging than plugging it into car?
Correct.
So really what they want us to do is keep unit plugged into car even when we're not using it
No... only when you ARE using it.
Think of it as not having a battery at all, and so you just plug it in whenever you use it in the car.
The battery can best be thought of as just a bonus for when you want to switch it on in your hand to have a little play.
