Satellite Navigation Info Pls

[venice]

Hi ...I just bought my first car. T-spirit auto, Ice Blue and get it next week. Yeehah!

Was talking to a friend last night who has sat nav on her Toyota (large screen). I'm very tempted as will be hopeless ...no sense of direction! Can anyone give me advice as to whether it's a good system (is a small screen, I know) and whether they've had any probs with it? Thks.

[alanbradley]

Hi there and welcome to the club.

I've heard the sat nav system is pretty good, but very expensive. For my parent's Yaris in France we have a small dash-mounted Garmin system (I think it's a Streetpilot III, but I'm not sure) that's pretty good and you can move it from car to car. It costs about half the Toyota system as it has just been replaced by a touch-screen system so it's on sale. The replacement is cheaper than the Toyota system too...

The only drawback is that the tiny memory stick (a proprietory format ) that came with ours is too small for the whole of britain or France to fit on, so for long journeys you would have to take a laptop to "re-fill" the stick.

Tom-tom also do a similar system that's about 500 quid too. It takes SD cards so you have fit more on them too.

That all seems a bit rambling... What I'm trying to say is that I believe the Toyota system is good, but there are aftermarket systems that have different benefits much more cheaply.

Hope this helps...

Cheers,

Alan

[T V O R]

I have to have sat nav as my sense of direction is terrible, I get lost in my own bed, that’s why I have a pillow to know which way is up :D

I have the TNS300, and it is great in my opinion, but a little expensive so it may be worth a haggle with Mr T.

I purposely try and confuse it by not going where it tells me and it still gets me from door to door, even putting in the coordinates (latitude and longitude) if there is no road name, just look it up on Multimap.com!

Safe stress free driving and you always know where you are, worth every penny when you are out of town, its dark and raining and you want to go home!

[venice]

Thanks for yr replies, very helpful. Noticed earlier, an ad at the heading of this page for reconditioned sat navs , dble clicked and nothing happened! Anyone know how to get the info, and has anyone used them? I hadn't considered a recond one.

Thanks in advance.......V

[vmail]

can the sat nav system go down?

[T V O R]

No problems yet, it uses a maximum of 8 satellites, the system will show you how many you have contact with, it’s DVD based and the wiring and radio is already in situ ready for install.

It been 100% reliable which is more I can say for the VDO system I use at work that has a tendency to lock up at the most inopportune time.

[vmail]

I know that you need 3 satelite to pin point where you are, there are 24 max sat nav satelite

if a sat nav system has 12 channels does that mean it can lock on to 12 satelite

is it possibe to modify a sat nav to make your own tracker?

[T V O R]

I think it would depend where you are in the world and where the satellites are in orbit?

I would think the systems have tracking/access to satellites more than the minimum amount needed due to the above.

I will have to do some research, but I think the companies that make these have covered all angles.

[ahkiu]

i have the tns200 system in my yaris, it's by and large fine ( i don't get lost anymore :D ) but if i was going to consider a new sat nav for my car, i'd go for a third party solution. Because it's 1) much cheaper than the toyota sat nav 2) portable when you change cars and 3) the ones i have used are generally better than the TNS 200 system in my car.

i'd suggest the tomtom to go, i'm considering that myself when it's time for me to sell the yaris :)

[Robie]

I have an Ipaq pocket pc mounted with a gps reciever attached. All in all it cost 205 pound including delivery and was extremely easy to set up.

I use Tom Tom Navigator 3 which is arguably the best navigation software out and along with a couple of third party programmes I have a speed camera database aswell so I get speed camera warnings through it which is usefull :) .

I cant fault it and I believe Toyota's sat nav is far more expensive than £205!

[Eddy5]

Current price for the Sat Nav on the Mr T site is £1305!!!!!!! Imagine how many maps you could buy for that (And if you need a gadget then you could buy many many 3rd party ones for that price too)

[Kenno]

I have an Ipaq pocket pc mounted with a gps reciever attached. All in all it cost 205 pound including delivery and was extremely easy to set up.

I use Tom Tom Navigator 3 which is arguably the best navigation software out and along with a couple of third party programmes I have a speed camera database aswell so I get speed camera warnings through it which is usefull :) .

I cant fault it and I believe Toyota's sat nav is far more expensive than £205!

Same here, and it's excellent. I paid a bit more cos I wanted a

flashy iPaq cos I use that quite a bit on it's own anyway. Well worth the money.