[feel free to ignore this post!]
So far this year I have collected a whole heap of new technology bits & pieces, including my TomTom which is slightly MINI related so let’s start there …
When I looked at the various navigation options, I eventually selected TomTom because it is well reviewed, has a nice large display and a clear user interface. I chose the top end TomTom 700 because (a) I like gadgets, (b) I planned to get a new phone and liked the bluetooth / hands free idea, (c) the “ASN” mode sounded useful when losing the satellite signals and (d) having all of USA mapped at once seemed much better than needing to load up various sections depending where you are.
More recently I did get a new phone, the Motorola RAZR, chosen partly because it is compatible with TomTom.
TomTom & RAZR happily talked bluetooth – but TomTom was next to useless for hands-free! I could hear people but they could hardly hear me using the microphone built in to the TomTom base. Maybe I’m just unlucky, but a listen only telephone was no use to me.
I tried to figure to get TomTom to just display the caller ID, but it insisted on taking over the speaker & microphone so after a week of failed experiments I gave up.
Also, the “ASN” function of TomTom is hopeless. Driving in the Boston / Big Dig tunnels, TomTom has no clue where I am (because the roads are different to its map data). When it loses the satellites, it seems to randomly place my car and hop around from road to road as time goes on. There does not seem to be ANY possible intelligence like “I was on that road before, so I must still be on that road or one that connects to it”!
I have lost satellite a few other times too, when the map data is correct, and still “ASN” decides I am leaping from road to road with no logic – from my experience, “ASN” is useless.
Finally, having all of USA in the TomTom is much more useless than useful, because whenever you want to enter an address, it comes up with similarly named places all over the country – and there are very many places called Essex, or whatever! It is somewhat smart in that it normally lists recently visited places early – but not smart enough apparently to list nearer places first if.
On a related subject, the POI (point of interest) function is often almost useless because the displayed names don’t scroll – so you key in (for example) “Circuit City” and it displays maybe 10; but they are all called “Circuit City” and it doesn’t have the display room to tell you which town each one is at – so you have to guess and pick one; then it figures a route to it and finally you get to see where it is and whether it is the one you wanted … if not, start again and try a route to a different one (just make sure to remember which ones you have tried already).
If I was doing it again, I’d get the less expensive TomTom – or maybe I’d find out if any of the other models on the market are more “real world useful” …
OK. How about:
I bought a new PC, a powerful “PowerSpec” with dual Athlon cores and lots of other “go faster” stuff. I also bought a nice Apple flat panel monitor to go with it, and a new Logitech bluetooth keyboard / mouse (thinking the bluetooth could make uploading to TomTom easier).
Well, the Apple monitor regularly “crashed” – it would ignore all its buttons, so you couldn’t adjust the brightness or turn it off/on. And it wouldn’t turn off when there was no dsplay – the backlight stayed on permanently (although of course there was nothing being displayed). I finally swapped it for a Samsung monitor which works fine.
Much more of a nightmare was the Logitech keyboard/mouse. Once I installed it, my brand new superfast PC would hang during boot for about FIVE MINUTES, doing nothing at all. Then eventually it would finish booting. But the mouse wouldn’t work for about 10-20 seconds more.
I searched all the Logitech help/support but found nothing, sent an email to them and got no reply, and eventually tried uninstalling – immediately my PC went back to the orignal fast boot. And it was also running much faster!
My suspicion is that the fancy new Logitech software doesn’t work properly with dual core, causing the long hang at boot-up and maybe forcing the PC to run as slow single core.
Thankfully, TigerDirect accepted the Logitech return without question … oh, and Logitech eventually sent a support reply about a week later – but with no helpful info!
My last tech nightmare is the HP 7310 All-In-One printer/scanner/copier/etc. It connects direct to the network, easy for my wife & I to share, and has great features like a “scan to” button on the front that sends a scanned image to a PC.
But for five days, and countless attempts, I could not get the HP software to install. It would get to 96% and hang. Or it would finish but the scanner was inaccessible. Or everything would be OK except the “scan to” button didn’t work.
I bounced back and forth with HP tech support – they at least replied quickly but their suggestions got more and more crazy (with no improvement); their last suggestion (which I did not try) involved deleting links to drives and “my computer” from my start menu!
Currently, the printer works, and the scanner normally works if accessed from the PC. The “scan to” button doesn’t work, and the HP drivers often cause my PC to fail to access the Internet for about the first 30 seconds after boot up. But it’s the best performance I’ve had so far from HP, so it will do!
So next time you experience a spurious “SES” light on your MINI, or that slightly annoying acceleration stumble, or a hesitancy for the auto transmission to shift, or too much DSC when pulling out and turning a corner … be thankful your MINI works at all! It wouldn’t if Logitech or HP got near it 😦
M&I / GBMINI 
Interesting what you say about the tomtom, I think I will pass on any sat nav for the moment! It was really useful when driving over europe, but I followed other ‘Navminis’. I live in a county called Essex in the UK, good job the map doesnt cover the globe really! Why dont you just get a bluetooth hands free headset/earpiece?
Just got as far as the TomTom section of this post so far. You shoulda had a Garmin 2610! 😉 Mine doesn’t have anything built in like ASN, but higher-end models do. Fortunately isn’t not a big deal most of the time. The ability to get traffic and data are moderately appealing, but largely worthless in my current Metro area; Indy’s just not big enough. The speakerphone bit seems gimmicky. I’ve also got a RAZR and it’s proved to be a very elegant piece of crap, just like every other Motorola phone. The UI’s abominable and slow, and lately it’s started dropping the connection to my headset (but only when I’m talking to my dad. Weird).
I’m starting to feel gadget overload, too. GPS, iPod, Valentine One, phone, headset, two camera. Most of those are in my car when I’m in it. If I get robbed, I’ll go bankrupt, and nevermind having to schlep that stuff in and out of the house!
Maybe it’s time to minimize (or at least stop buying stuff!).
Are you not able to limit the scope of searches with the TT? I’m able to specify a city, state or zip when looking up an address.
Never heard of a monitor crashing… that’s really interesting. You know it’s also ironic because the Apple monitor is actually a Samsung panel.
I don’t talk on my phone often enough to wear a permanent headset – the car hands free seemed like a nice solution (if it worked).
The first thing you enter on TomTom when searching is the town – but there are loads of towns with the same name in USA! I haven’t tried entering a zip (but mostly I don’t know the zip for a town I want to go to).
Too much technology? No such thing! 🙂
As for the tom tom, you are overlooking the overall benefits and functionality. In fact it sounds like you are nitpicking the details like (gasp!) one of us Mac users! 🙂
I suppose the mic issue is because it is off to your side, not in front of you on the windshield or dash where your voice is more directed. Time to solder in a mic extention!
As for the mouse and the moniter, I’ve got nothing good to say. Some things just don’t work well with others. You just seem to have bad luck. 😦
You are quickly learning why I hate almost all printers. Tech head as I am, I haven’t had a printer at home for 7 years! I despise inkjets. Perhaps I’ll soon get one of those cheap laser printers but I don’t have that much more faith in laser. The all-in-ones to me sound like a disaster waiting to happen, needing custom software and drivers. I would prefer a printer with IP printing so it is as independent from the computer as possible. Don’t worry–the various printer/copiers at work costing many times as much are just as useless.
All I can comment on is the GPS.I have 2 garmins a 2610 and a 2620.2610 is 3 years old with no problems.2620 is 2 months old.I love the 2620,has all of north american preloaded.Fast to grab satilites,easy to find directions,easy to use waypoints etc.Tried a friends TOMTOM didn’t like it.
I do like the Tom Tom, but it has no idea what’s going on in downtown Boston… the maps need an update.
I went over the Zakim with one the other day and according to it, I was in the bay.
Is your middle name Ted? =) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Kaczynski).
Seriously I know how you feel. Most of the time my technology plans just never seem to pan out like I envisioned them. I too am a gadget guy but very few live up to the billing.
Never could get my wireless Logitech mouse to be very responsive but with a lot of fussing with the controls, on the mouse and in the software preferences, I did get it to work well enough to use it for a year, after which it died.
Last year I bought a Epson R1800 printer and was very happy, except for all the ink cartridges it consumes, it has 8, until I noticed that it was printing things the wrong size. Epson blamed it on Apple, Apple said they could fix it but never did get it to print properly. My wife and I spent 4 hours running tests and finally fixed some of the problems, it does print beautifully though.
I love my Dension iPod set up but it has never worked as advertised.
My Escort 8500 Passport has been a great addition to the MCS and has worked way better than I my Valentine owning neighbors bad review of it.
My G4/800 is running great after 3 years and my 22″ Cinema display is fabulous.
We bought a fancy flat screen digital TV last year and the Good Guys sold me on a “Universal Controller” that would rid us of the 3 controllers needed to make the DVD player, cable box and TV all work together, they even sent out their “ACE” tech guy…… we still have 3 controllers! It’s a nice TV though.
My ’02MINI was a work in progress but the ’04 has been bullet proof!
I remember all the Digital pundits suggesting that “Brick & Mortar” stores would all disappear along with books and a variety of other items and whatever happened to the “Paperless Society?”….ya ever order a pair of pants online or try and read a novel online? The pants usually aren’t quite right and your eyes would fall outta your head if you tried to finish even 2 chapters.
If Thomas Brothers made a digital map book would be kool.
I love my digital world but in real life it doesn’t always work out.
I don’t have anything to say on most of your comments – however the Apple monitor issue I can perhaps offer insight. My mother-n-law is about a week away from getting a new computer – a dual-core PC, etc. She was looking at getting an Apple display and was told after doing more research that the Apple display’s/monitor’s are not compatible with PC’s in that the buttons do not sork, so you cannot adjust color, brightness, etc. So I suspect this was part of your issue. This is no 100% guaranteed accurate, but she’s pretty diligent in her research so I think it is probably pretty reliable.
I still wonder why anyone would still be buying monitors? But to each his own.
Maybe you should try the Garmin Nuvi — I have one and am happy with it. It has the sirf III chipset so it should hold on to the satellite signal better (though not in tunnels obviously). It acquires signal faster, so maybe upon exiting a tunnel it’d be able to locate you more quickly. The maps are supposedly better as well (Navteq data).
BTW Ian – if you need to dump that shiny new Apple monitor just let me know 😉