New to sat nav

[MelC]

I am new to sat nav, but am interested in buying one with fairly good coverage of Europe ( particularly Spain / Portugal), without having to buy aditional maps etc. I would also like to be able to find my way in the UK using just postcodes. I have been considering the Tom Tom Go 500 or the Garmin 320. But I have just read about Navman and am now totally confused, can anyone suggest a site where I can get a comparison of the models out there? Also I have a Tungsten T3, would I just be better off just geting sat nav software for this instead? Is this as good?

[JAM]

Another new member to sat nav.
I may be able to answer a little with my very limited experiance.
Form what I have read the U.K., is covered by one SD card. Europe is an SD card per country unless the unit has a hard drive like tom tom go 700 or the mio 269. They seem to store all of Europe and UK so you don't have to keep changing the maps, but check it out. Remember I'm new too.
I've tried the 'inc 510', mio 269, but what won me over was tom tom go 500. I've been experimenting as many different scenarios, purposely going down wrong roads and it recalculated within seconds. I'm still learning many new things that it can do, immpressive.
As far as feed back on 'field tests' are conerned it is very hit-an-miss, I had to do a lot of searching of various mags to get the answers.
I hope this will help you, as I said the best unit I've found was Tom Tom GO 500 was good enough for me.

[lupos0_1]

If you are still considering the pocket pc, the map of England will fit on a basic 128mb SD card. If you are looking for the European maps as well, I believe that the cheapest way of doing this would be to purchase a set with tomtom 3 and then upgrading to tomtom 5. This way you will get the european maps for free. If you do not want to change SD Cards between countries, you will need to purchase a 256mb SD card (not expensive) and this will give you coverage of all the major roads in europe. For coverage information, please go to:

http://www.tomtom.com/shop/upgrade.php?action=pdasub1

The added advantage that I've found using a pocket pc is that you can also use it for a diary, contacts (and with some models a mobile phone). I have not had the pleasure of using a tomtom go but on the other hand have not had any problems using the pocket pc.

Hope this helps you

[JAM]

Originally Posted by lupos0_1

If you are still considering the pocket pc, the map of England will fit on a basic 128mb SD card. If you are looking for the European maps as well, I believe that the cheapest way of doing this would be to purchase a set with tomtom 3 and then upgrading to tomtom 5. This way you will get the european maps for free. If you do not want to change SD Cards between countries, you will need to purchase a 256mb SD card (not expensive) and this will give you coverage of all the major roads in europe. For coverage information, please go to:

http://www.tomtom.com/shop/upgrade.php?action=pdasub1

The added advantage that I've found using a pocket pc is that you can also use it for a diary, contacts (and with some models a mobile phone). I have not had the pleasure of using a tomtom go but on the other hand have not had any problems using the pocket pc.

Hope this helps you

lupos0 1
I'm sorry for the delay with my reply to you, (your immdieate reply 11.7.05, my return to you 26.7.05), your answers were very useful.
I got the TomTomGO 500 in the end and I found it very immpressive, thank you.