Derrick
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- Joined
- Nov 22, 2010
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It must be a worrying time for the makers of map books: when one drives around Johannesburg, it is now common to see personal navigation devices - GPSes, if you prefer - attached to car windshields.
These devices are becoming indispensable for people who spend their days driving from meeting to meeting. The devices have also proved a godsend for couriers and metered taxi drivers.
Until recently, though, South Africans have had little choice in satellite navigation devices other than those made by Garmin. But now we're spoilt for choice, with GPSes from the likes of TomTom, Navigon and Road Angel widely available.
One of the latest is the Go 720 from TomTom, which we checked out on a recent trip to Durban. The 720 is one of the slimmest navigation devices we've used and has a clear, bright, 4,3-inch, 480 x 272-pixel screen visible even in direct sunlight. We were particularly impressed with how quickly the device locked onto satellites. It was also able to keep the signal anywhere in the vehicle, and even stayed connected indoors.
On the downside, the 720 took inordinately long to charge from a car cigarette lighter. We also noticed a few problems with the maps. On the N3 near Estcourt the device informed us we were driving through the veld several hundred metres from the highway. On the plus side, we could have fixed that problem using a map editor on the device and shared those changes with others using an online TomTom technology called Map Share - a bit like Wikipedia for maps - when we got home.
These devices are becoming indispensable for people who spend their days driving from meeting to meeting. The devices have also proved a godsend for couriers and metered taxi drivers.
Until recently, though, South Africans have had little choice in satellite navigation devices other than those made by Garmin. But now we're spoilt for choice, with GPSes from the likes of TomTom, Navigon and Road Angel widely available.
One of the latest is the Go 720 from TomTom, which we checked out on a recent trip to Durban. The 720 is one of the slimmest navigation devices we've used and has a clear, bright, 4,3-inch, 480 x 272-pixel screen visible even in direct sunlight. We were particularly impressed with how quickly the device locked onto satellites. It was also able to keep the signal anywhere in the vehicle, and even stayed connected indoors.
On the downside, the 720 took inordinately long to charge from a car cigarette lighter. We also noticed a few problems with the maps. On the N3 near Estcourt the device informed us we were driving through the veld several hundred metres from the highway. On the plus side, we could have fixed that problem using a map editor on the device and shared those changes with others using an online TomTom technology called Map Share - a bit like Wikipedia for maps - when we got home.