So would I. With two snot-nosed (but adorable) kids in tow you never know what you might find. :/

The Garmin ones do look quite nice, especially the fancy ones, but the pronunciation of road names like A5132 would annoy me constantly - the Garmins pronounce that "Ay five thousand one hundred thirty-two", which is just wrong. They do have nice map displays though, although still not as clear as my old (and broken) Navman S50.

Can't do the phone thing either, as I don't have a nice phone :(

Consensus seems to be TomTom (and from what I've been reading, the GO LIVE 1000 appears to be well-liked) so I'll give it a go - maybe there's an option to change the map colour scheme, or maybe I'll (!) just get used to it.

It's a sat nav. Does the colour scheme really matter? :S

That's rich coming from you dear.

David Cameron can't call a women "Dear", but Psycho Geezer is allowed to call Pete "Dear". Is that all clear?

As clear as a fresh stream (the water type not the online media type)

If it helps map legibility in high-stress situations, then of course it does.

Y'know after reading this thread, I'm starting to think there's a little of PB in all of us. :')

 

I'm having mine surgically removed next week. :C

Can your SatNav handle Broughton Steet?

Never had to use it to get there - although i suspect it says it wrong.

 

The one that sticks in my mind is always Jodpurs for Jedburgh :D

I tried a few different ones, but finally settled on a large chinese jobby from DealExtreme.

Linky

Yeah, it's the US version, with outdated maps, but it comes with iGo 8 and the maps are easily obtained. I replaced that with iGo Primo 1.2 and it works really well. I also enjoyed fannying around with various CE applications and addons.

If you find the right files, iGo will accept either Navteq or TeleAtlas maps, supports terrain elevation files (for 3D maps), configurable POIs, replaceable voice files (including Text to Speech for reading out street names).

The only real downside is that the screen is hard to see in bright sunshine, and the battery only really lasts for around 2 hours unless its plugged in. Still, it's only around £50.

6" screen 8-O

And what's the map display like in use? Can you provide pictures? :D Is it smooth? My Navman was kinda jerky, but the video review of the TomTom GO LIVE 1000 showed that one as being pretty smooth. I bet these things would look much nicer with some actual 3D hardware, but hey.

Not really bothered about battery life tbh, as it's only really gonna get used in the car.

I've been tempted with some of the DealExtreme Windows CE knock offs. Can't you stick TomTom on some of those too?

I got an ebuyer value one for about 30 quid, and then TomTom accidentally fell of the internet onto it.

I thought that was the case with these. A huge screen is tempting to have a dedicated satnav.

I used to find TomTom on my WM phone much easier to follow than Google Nav on my Desire. Not quite sure what it is, maybe the lines too narrow or the colours too similar but on a few occasions I've been confused where to go at junctions with lots of roads off them.

One of the things I liked best about my Navman was that all the roads were grey except the one you were following, which was green (and I think motorways, which might have blue). It was really nice and easy to follow. I'd show you a picture but every single screenshot of the actual device on Google Images seems to show the exact same image.

I tried the eBuyer G422 before Xmas, it was dire. The supplied software was awful; even after replacing this software with iGo, the voice directions were difficult to understand due to the feeble internal speaker which distorted when turned up loud enough to hear.

You can put TomTom on most of the generic ones, though there seems to be a problem with stability on the Windows CE 6 ones with more than 64MB of RAM, apparently TomTom doesn't expect 128MB of RAM so screws up if you're not careful. There's no such problems with iGo, in fact it works better with 128MB RAM if you're planning on adding loads of plugins.

The update speed depends on how much information is in the data files, plus how complicated the current location is. I've been using the full UK and Northern Ireland Navteq maps, complete with the full UK POI data (albeit only displaying parking and fuel on the live map) and 3D buildings for main cities. With text to speech enabled I'm still getting around 10 FPS most of the time. I did try running with the elevation data (which renders the map in 3D instead of on a 2D plane), but that dropped the display to approx 2-3 FPS at times.

 

If you check the "User Pictures" section of Deal Extreme, you'll see more pictures. I'll try and upload some shots later.