Got my TomTom Go 700

Because I didn't feel like shelling out the extra $2000 for onboard navigation system, I decided to take some of the cash I have budgeted for my Prius and ordered a TomTom Go 700 navigation system -- after all said and done, I got it for about $725 shipped.

All in all it's pretty cool! It's navigated me successfully to places where I've never been and it even got the wife into Reading, PA from a starting point pretty far away from our house (in Delaware), saving her the hassle of driving back down to a familliar area before starting her trip... So, the nitty gritty:

It's bluetooth enabled so you can use your cell phone to make calls through it to points of interest whose phone numbers have been programmed in. You can also subscribe to a $5/month service that updates your travel path with weather and traffic conditions, rerouting you appropriately. You can navigate to an address, point of interest, zip code, city, and several other things. It's quite configurable and it runs on compressed version of linux making some of it fall under the GPL, so there are 3rd party programs and add-ons you can load up.

I'll admit, I did get a few extra voice packs (Yoda, Ozzy, Captain Picard, Darth Vader, James Bond, Homer Simpsion and a few others), which is all good and fun, till it starts becoming really annoying, but there's nothing quite like hearing a bad voice actor doing Ozzy... "In 800 meters, get on the f-f-fff--fu**ing motorway." The thing I *hate* about it (and this is apparently common with most GPS systems) is the inaccuracy of the POI's... gas stations, restaurants and even theatres are often on the wrong side of the road, inaccurately placed or all together missing. Since TomTom is based out of Europe, there's been quite a movement to maintain a custom list of POI's that folks have made available for download, but no such luck here in the states.

All in all, I'm glad I got this -- between our occasional day trips, my concerts, and the future trips I'm sure we'll be taking in the Prius, it's a good buy. Now, if I can only find a bluetooth cell phone that has the OBEX protocol enabled so it'll work with the Prius... I'm looking at the MM-A940.

 

It came with the latest firmware -- not sure about the maps, but from the literature I've read, the 700's come with the most up to date maps of the US and Canada.

 

It's very cool that people can develop 3rd party stuff for it. However, with the latest firmware update (that adds some more Bluetooth functionality), the older apps won't work and an SDK doesn't look like it'll be coming out for a couple more months.