Archive for the 'beetle' Category

TomTom 920T (GPS) Review: Part the third

No awesome news at this point. While I continue to appreciate the user interface overall, and the beautiful industrial design, I am no longer in love with this product. You can start with my honeymoon review (#1), and my 3 month slump review (#2) here before reading this (my 3rd) review.

  • I am still irked by the cable situation: You can have the iPod control cable, or the traffic cable, but not both. What’s up with that, TomTom?
  • Crappy FM transmission to the radio. Admittedely, this is an almost universally sucky problem unless you live on Mars, but in the bay area, and anywhere with a lot of overhead wires (electric bus lines, in particular) its essentially unusable. For folks without an aux port to their car stereo, it’s pretty much the only solution, and its sad that it doesn’t work.
  • Now the really bad news: The connecting via aux port is bad too. I recently bought a new car with an aux stereo port, but there is a ton of high pitch over the 1/8th inch stereo plug (and I tried another cable, just to be sure). I’m now plugging my iPod directly in to my car stereo, and letting the TomTom’s internal speakers give out overly chatty directions. So much for allowing the TomTom / iPod control, and allowing the TomTom to act as a hub.
  • Finally, disregard of traffic conditions. It’s easy enough to see 101 is a mess on my iPhone, but for some reason the TomTom can’t or doesn’t care. Using approximately the same traffic information, it seems to think that I can squeeze a 1.5 hour drive into 45 minutes. Rerouting? Why bother. Those solid red and yellow lines all over 101 can’t possibly mean a delay!

So, in conclusion (for now) I won’t recommend this device to friends. It works well enough getting me from A to B and I don’t intend to replace it anytime soon, but I’ll definitely borrow a friend’s Garmin or other device for a week next time I am in the market.
I’m getting a lot of referral traffic from GPSTrackLog, which has compiled a list of reviews for the TomTom 920T (and every other GPS device on the market), so definitely check them out for potentially more balanced reviews ;)

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Gps solution for beetle



Gps solution for beetle, originally uploaded by erikgibb.

I bought a new VW Bug this weekend (photos to come) … in the mean time, I’m posting a fun DIY hack for my GPS.

The Beetle’s windscreen is too far away for the GPS, and the dashboard is just a bit too curved and a bit too matte for the suction cup to stick. I attached a 3/4" dowel to a bell jar plastic lid with epoxy, wrapped the dowel with a couple of rubberbands to prevent spinning, and the suction cup stays attached to the lid nicely.

I can touch the GPS with my index finger while my hands are on the wheel.

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