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Getting off the road to nowhere Ian Wishart roadtests the new TomTom GO 950 GPS system
I
recall, five years ago now, unpacking a brand new Navman GPS system, plugging it in and putting it to the test locally. I well remember being instructed to take a shortcut up a road that I knew to be a dead end, and further instructed to drive across what the Navman insisted was asphalt but I could plainly see was paddock. It was a quick baptism of fire as to the limits of modern guidance technology. To be fair, the fault is not that of the GPS retailers like Navman or TomTom, but that of the New Zealand agencies they purchase their mapping information from. You see, out beyond the city fringe it is common for legal roads to exist on paper (or software), and on council town planning maps, that have never actually been built. Provided the motorist is wise to this possibility, few things can go wrong in vehicular sat-nav operations. On the test-bed this month was the new TomTom GO 950, the top of the range system spearheading the company’s push into the Australasian market. At first glance, this unit is light years ahead of the five year old Navman. I should say that at final glance it was still light years ahead, except for one irritating oversight by TomTom, which is this: When our daughter’s finger was accidentally amputated at daycare, the ambulance rushed her to Middlemore Hospital in South Auckland. I remembered the Navman having a useful ‘points of interest” list pre-programmed that included medical centres and hospitals. In vain, I searched for a simple icon on the TomTom that could find the hospital without me having to know the street address. Try as I might, I couldn’t find one and the unit became a dead weight as far as the rush to hospital was concerned. Alas, as I later discovered, there is a function that can direct you to hospitals, but it’s buried in the Help Me menu which, as a rule with computer products, usually revolves around troubleshooting the device rather than providing genuine lifesaving help. Better, on reflection, to have an icon for Emergency Centres, perhaps illustrated with an ambulance icon. 72 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM April 2010
The 950 offers built in maps of NZ, Australia, USA, Canada and 45 countries across Europe. If you are ever planning to travel anywhere, the GO 950 literally makes the world your oyster
That said, it was the only negative experience I had with the GO 950. The first thing worth raving about is that TomTom have packed this unit with everything else imaginable. For example, the 950 offers built in maps of NZ, Australia, USA, Canada and 45 countries across Europe. If you are ever planning to travel anywhere, the GO 950 literally makes the world your oyster. With many other GPS systems you pay an extra $300 or so for maps of each different country, so you can see how the GO 950’s price tag of just $849 makes it a
steal in terms of the millions of kilometres of roads on offer. A more interactive business model means maps can be updated by other TomTom users and shared via a free PC connection – a useful addition given the number of major roading projects currently interfering with traffic routing. TomTom have also brought interactivity to the dashboard, with the GO 950 reporting speed cameras both fixed and mobile on your route, thanks to a screen icon allowing you or other TomTom users to report