Navigator 5 route planning problems

Hello,
I know alot of people have had problems with 5 and their gps unit in particular the wired gps units. I currently use an Ipaq 3950 in conjunction with a Garmin 12xl gps. I have been using TomTom 3 and have travelled North and South without problem. There are one or two things I don't like about 3, but it has always guided me to my destination. I decided to upgrade to TomTom 5 after reading about the new features, it looked a big improvement. How wrong I was.
First of all the program wouldn't detect my gps, not a good start. So I put 3 back on and waited weeks for TomTom to fix. I have now upgraded the upgrade and 5 now detects my gps, but for some reason shows my home position about 200yds from where it should be, sometimes it gets it right, but mostly it is wrong. This is NOT a problem with my gps. The first route I planned just to see how it worked, you try this!
Set your start to a place called Messingham, North Lincolnshire. Set the destination to Grimsby, North Lincolnshire. Navigator tries to get you on to a Motorway by way of a service track, not a junction. How good is that? Now I know about this and would ignore the route, but if I were a stranger to the area................! My second route (yes, two out of two routes both failed)
try this one. Again, set start from Messingham and set destination to "Kirton in Lindsey", Lincolnshire and street "Lincoln Crescent" any number between 53 & 80. On my version (latest) it comes up with "No route found". EXCELLENT, not. So as you can see I am not best pleased with 5. I have re installed 3 and am awaiting more fixes to what seems to be a buggy program.
Or could I be doing something wrong. Please advise. Oh! and let me know if your 5 behaves the same way as mine does.
Thanx and regards
RichardJG

My unit to does the exact same as yours. I did notice that the street you are trying to access in Kirton in Lindsey is classified as a road that is pedestrianised (at least the symbol states no cars. I am therefore presuming that the problem lies with the map software. I have not heard of a fix for this coming out and if you are going to wait for a new map, you may be waiting a long time as tomtom have only jusdt released this update.

Hi, Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post. I'm also pleased that your software behaves the same as mine. No, I can assure you that the road is a road and not pedestrianised. The point is that the address was found in the database, so why is it rejected in the actual route planning stage. However, my main concern is the problem regarding the mistake with the motorway junction. Navigator 3 didn't make this mistake. And I guess this mistake could happen all over the country.
Regards
RichardJG

HI Richard,

I have also updated to Tom Tom 5 from version 3 and on my first main trip to Wales it worked well until it decided that a farm track was a junction off the motorway !

the track did not even reach the motorway and all I saw was a large hedge !.

then Tom Tom kept asking me to turn round at the next junction and head back to this farm track until I finally pulled over and got it to work out an alternative route.

it again planned the return route again down this farmers track to get back onto the motorway and I spent around 20 miles driving round a little town and country lanes trying to get Tom Tom to forget this farm track.

I was not happy espically as I had a friend in the car who I was telling him how good Tom Tom was? he finds it rather funny that Tom Tom wanted to take me down a farmers private track to leave and get on to a major motorway

Why Tom Tom removed the great avoid area feature in version 3 I will never know and I just wish that they would put it back !

Hello Hartrockets,
Your post has convinced me that I need to put navigator 3 back on my pda.
Your experience is exactly the point I was trying to make. I like to demonstrate how brilliant GPS navigation is, but with software like this, it wouldn't do the industry any good at all. So back to navigator 3 and what a waste of money.
Regards
RichardJG

I too am waiting for a better version of TT5 before upgrading from TT3 after reading the posts on this forum. I was wondering, though, if the problem you state RichardJG is the fault of TT5 or the updated maps. My reason for upgrading would be to get updated maps because I'm more than happy with TT3. However if the maps are causing problems, I might as well stick to the older ones. Notwithstanding, TomTom really needed to make the new maps backward compatible with TT3. This state of affairs is plainly ridiculous.

Hi Stormlord,
Not knowing how navigator uses the maps, I'm afraid I can't answer your question. But, looking at the maps everything seems to be as it should, I have noticed that in my area there are one or two street names wrong, which obviously will cause problems. So maybe it's 50-50. All in all a bad upgrade I think. Navigator 3 is such a good product it just wanted a few more bells and whistles. Looks like they've broken it. hopefully it will be fixed. Should never have been released. We really need a British product, what's happened to all our brilliant software writers. Ooops! going off on one.
Such is life!
RichardJG

LOL! I totally agree. Many thanks for your reply.

Last Friday I was trying to get to Settle using TT5 but the only reference provided was to "Settle (Skipton)" using the 'Address' method. The location provided was actually a roundabout a mile or so outside Skipton, but miles away from Settle. I had to browse the map to get TT5 to route to Settle.

Later at home after a bit of messing around I could find Settle by using the "City Centre" function. Also, a week ago i was using TT5 to get back to the office and it only warned of a junction to take when i was literally on it at 50 mph. I had to go further down the road and do a U turn. TT% is nowhere near as good as TT3

Hi Bluehagon,
Your last problem, regarding the late warning, is maybe related to the problem I mentioned in my first post and that was the 200yd off correct position whilst parked outside my home. I know for a fact that this wasn't a gps problem and also the coordinates on the gps matched the coordinates shown on the gps status screen. if there is such an inaccuracy this would explain why you had a late warning. This is not good, TomTom are going to have do something about this that's for sure. For me, it's good to know that I'm not the only one having problems. Thanks for the input.

Regards
RichardJG