afeudale , thanks for the welcoming, I saw you were posting here after you oficially signed off from the gpspassion forums. But you make a mistake assuming that I finally switched to tomtom. I am just testing this 720 of a very close friend of mine. I am supposed to give him an honest unbiased opinion on wich unit to get; a now 400$ c550 or a new 500$ Tomtom 720. The task is not that easy. The more I test the core of a this 2 GPS's side by side (its digital maps and its routing engine) the more I keep falling in love with Garmin. There was no doubt in my mind , GArmin maps were superior, after reading several forums and sources for almost a year but Canada has taught me to give always the benefit of the doubt and search more with different sources and opinions (back in Cuba everything is blanck and white, no colors or even tints in between, and you only get the official version and are always presume guilty until you prove you are innocent). For that along with the freedom we enjoy here , I will always be more than grateful to this Country even if after 5 years I still rather have only my permanent resident status and keep my Cuban citizenship (for what it is worth the last one!!! lol lol lol lol lol)
Do not get me wrong either , the TomTom 720 is a fine unit with lots of features and customization, unlike Magellan well implemented by the way , but for me a GPS is basically a GPS AND HAS TO HAVE ACCURATE DIGITAL MAPS AND AN OPTIMAL ROUTING ENGINE. And in my opinion TomTom TeleAtlas maps fails in their accuracy versus the 1 and a half year old Navteq 2005 version maps. The routing engine on both seems similar , no big difference there with Tomtom really being more reallistic (assuming traffic lites, rests along long routes) in their ETA's most of the time. But with Garmin all has a big prize tag , Tomtom offers more for less money.
I am glad you like your unit though, by the way my GTM 20 receiver (Garmin RDS-TMC) was defective and GArmin just sent me a new one , even after the 1 year warranty. UPS left a notice on friday. I will do more field test with the new one to update my posted calculated coverage maps in Toronto if needed. But I guess because even the defcetive one was still showing levels around 40 here in Mississauga , the issue was not related to sensitivity/reception. So the maps should stay the same.
That is why Gadget-guy when you said you lost reception in Etobicoke I suspected you might be using the old version of the Tomtom RDS receiver. I hope you find the new version though. It started to sell recently in UK but keep in mind as afeudale posted European version will not work here in North America. FM spectrum is the same , 20 Mhz band with (87.5 to 108 Mhz), 20 channels separeted by 100 khz spacing. The only difference here in NA we use odd channels like 100.7 or 104.5 in Europe they use even channels like 99.0 or 102.2 (note the end number). Both receivers will be able to tune in to all the 200 possible channels (100 even + 100 odd) BUT THE EUROPEAN RDS-TMC RECEIVER DOES NOT HAVE THE PROPER AUTHORIZATION CODES TO DECODE TMC EVENTS HERE IN NA. That is why for the same reason some UK users that bought Garmin RDS-tmc receivers (by mistake of the supplier to the retailer) intended to France did not even work in UK.
Maybe Best BUY US has it but generally they only sell GPS units not their accesories, make sure it is the last Version 3, good luck
Keep us posted if possible in regards of better coverage , faster events downloads with the new receiver in the same area. It might help someelse out there.
