13 Responses

1. Boomerang

   May 26th, 2008 at 2:24 pm

   1

   Excellent job!!! Did I miss it in the part 1 review about how quick it is at re-routing if you miss a turn?

   Thanks for sharing the magic!

   Best,

   Andy

2. scottc

   May 27th, 2008 at 7:20 pm

   2

   Hi Boomerang; part one only shows the hardware, I’m halfway through writing part 3 which will actually show the unit in action, and will look closer at things like rerouting.

3. Orphius

   May 28th, 2008 at 10:26 am

   3

   I saw in some blogs, people are facing sponteneous reboot of 930. Can you make any comment or suggest any fix on that?

   I am planning to buy 930 T but this rebooting issue is holding me back
   Thanks

4. scottc

   May 28th, 2008 at 10:28 am

   4

   I’ve used it for over 50 hours non stop now, without any reboots or crashes.

   And I’ve been in every single menu option of the device, used every single feature, so if there were a reboot issue, I would have found it by now.

5. Orphius

   May 28th, 2008 at 10:47 am

   5

   Sorry, I should give you url also. Here is one example. This guy is comparing nuvi780 and go 930 and driving about 8000 miles! (he is in vacation).

   http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=110142&whichpage=2

   In page 7 he concluded, [...All my reboots have always been while connected. Using it without power, the 930 has worked perfectly. I have changed the car adapter and the TMC receiver and the problem persists. I noticed yesterday that it rebooted at various times like redrawing the map after a turn, when giving instructions, or just traveling down the road. No pattern that I can figure out.

   Today I used the 920 in the car and just turned the 930 on and let it sit in a tray in the armrest. The 930 worked fine until the battery got low and it shut off. This makes me wonder if it isn't the cables , could it be the HEAT of the unit being in the front window of the vehicle. We have reboot problems with it in the window and powered but not when it isn't in the window and is not powered.] INTERESTING OBSERVATION.

   I also found this issue from some other user but at this moment cant recall which forum.

   Thanks for quick reply.

6. John

   June 1st, 2008 at 11:05 pm

   6

   For the reboots, I’ve been refreshing the maps whenever the reboots become a problem and that seems to reduce the reboot frequency for a while.

   The biggest problem that I have is the HOV lanes, initially it did not ask me whether I wanted to route via HOV lanes or not but when I updated the maps it would ask if I wished to avoid HOV lanes, however this preference is not considered on subsequent reroutes due to traffic conditions or missed turns resulting in the TT930 mysteriously directing me back to the HOV entrances. It had me circling the NW transit center three times by various routes.

   Another problem that I have is volume, the volume of the instructions is quite loud and satisfactory, the music is quieter and often I wind up cranking the stereo volume excessively to hear the music but most annoying is that the handsfree phone mode is barely audible even with the volume cranked all the way.

   The audio is also prong to hanging if a call comes in while you are in a speech dialog session with the TomTom. Not that you could do much with the incoming call as it will be barely audible.

   So far, most of the POI’s in my neighborhood are on the exact opposite side of the freeway from where they actually are, moving them as a mapshare correction seems to disassociate the POI from it’s phone number and address. The “Manage POI” function does not allow you to select from all POI categories but basically only from the categories you’ve created or downloaded to the unit hence you cannot edit the phone number back to a restaurant whose map location you’ve corrected.

   The re-routes are fast, to the point that it’ll be directing you to a HOV entrance well before you realize what had happened.

   The IQ routes and the traffic updates have been very effective except when it tries to route me onto HOV lanes but I think the quirky interface indicates serious design problems with the software.

7. Wong

   June 4th, 2008 at 4:53 pm

   7

   It seems that the IQ routes is not as smart as it should be (or make it choose the more stupid route). The reboot problem will hold me off. I think the routing and stability is the major function of any GPS.

8. hatchoo

   June 9th, 2008 at 11:41 am

   8

   SHAME on TomTom. They DO NOT honour the 30 day map guarantee. They do NOT tell you that downloading any update prevents you from downloading any further update even within your 30 day guarentee. This is outrageous. Stay away from TomToms.

9. Indiana Pete

   June 22nd, 2008 at 6:51 pm

   9

   A fundamental flaw that was just mentioned in passing is the poor windshield mount. This negates all of the warm fuzzy GPS benefits if the darned thing cannot be reliably installed. If the reboot issue is widespread this could be the debacle that puts Tom tom out of business. Their stock is seriously down at this time and with their inept support and service they are in danger of self-destructing!

10. sm

    July 18th, 2008 at 4:48 pm

    10

    I think the rebooting issue has only got to do with some defective units, I’m sure TomTom would be happy to exchange those.

    On the other hand, I’ve “hacked” the 930 firmware onto my 920 (100% full functionality) and it had never rebooted. I drive a lot in the UK in towns and motorways and it never happened.

11. sm

    July 18th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

    11

    With regards to the windshield mount, if you fix the mount before you put the device up, and make sure you hold and press the middle with a bit of force, then it should stay sucked in firmly. And then put the device on. I’ve done this 100% times without fail, and I did not need to wet it too. Try it.

12. William

    August 4th, 2008 at 3:49 pm

    12

    GO 930 Fantastic…? Well, here are some of my considerations. On a trip from southern Sweden (Gothenburg) to northern Sweden (Hundsjö, Björnsjö socken, Ångermanland) I made some notes:

    I’m missing some basic features that every GPS I have used in the past 15 years have been equipped with:
    *) Max speed memory
    *) Trip distance travelled
    *) Average speed for trip
    *) Moving average for trip
    *) Track of distance travelled
    *) and much more…
    -Theese where features I thought where basic standard for GPS receivers—

    Speed camera warning is pretty poor:
    *) It warns you for cameras in opposite directions. Thus, 50% of all warnings is false ones.
    *) It warns to late. You have to take down speed by service brakes even at low over speeding, = fuel penalty, instead of coasting the vehicle at fuel cut off.
    *) Warning to late for speed cams is especially annoying while overtaking. In the middle of a overtaking, if the speed cam varning goes off, you have to panic brake in order to avoid this nuiscance.

    The units choice of road is somethimes very strange:
    *) Up in the north, in order to have me to avoid 1km (very good indeed) gravel road the unit redirect me a on 50km detour on very poor asphalt road.
    *) If I switch the unit from “finding fastest” to “finding shortest” trip, the GO 930 really finds the “shortest” trip. It finds the real djungle roads and paths. These are paths that not even a 4wd off-road vehicle would be able to cross, you would need a half track vehicle at the least…
    To comparison, my 6 year old Garmin GPS V makes much better road choices (while at 100 times slower to compute, but still!)

    The unit might be phenomenal in many respects, especially in fast finding adresses in crowded cities. It has a lot of bells and whistles, beeing able to connect the cell phone to the mp3-player to the bluetooth to the car stereo to -etc. Though, when in less crowded areas, travelling in a motor vehicle, you need something else. On foot, in the woods, you are much better suited with a good old paper map and a compass.

13. Tom

    August 15th, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    13

    I have to chime in with a couple of things…

    First…at one point the reviewer described the display as clear and bright even in direct sunlight. This is simply untrue. My jaw dropped when I read that. Every other review, and my own 3 weeks of using it, will confirm that this is a MAJOR DRAWBACK of the 930. The screen is *not* bright and clear in sunlight. It’s dim, and washed out. Sunglasses on? Even worse. I have a Garmin Streetpilot I got for free 2 years ago that has a brighter, clearer screen. The display is gorgeous in the shade, unfortunately it’s rarely shady directly under my car’s windshield.

    Next…battery life. In a word: lousy. Advertised as 5 hours? Perhaps if you are driving at night at minimum screen brightness, volume all the way off, bluetooth off, FM transmitter off, and have it set to shut off the screen between instructions. Then maybe. But under normal use? an hour…maybe? The problem is that it’s not simple to toggle those settings - each is buried within a byzantine menu structure with far too many choices. At any rate - it should not advertise 5 hours. No way, no how.

    (I’m only focusing on the negative, because the author has certainly covered the positive).
    Finding POIs. Buggy. If you search for something with “Any POI category” chances are it won’t find anything. You have to specify the category. This may not seem like a big deal…but it’s a couple extra touches on the screen (and probably taking your eyes off the road) - and it’s not optimal if you know the name of what you’re looking for. I’m looking for “Joe’s Widgets”…why do I have to drill down and make a guess about what category TomTom thinks is the right one for widgets? If you don’t specify the category, you can type “Joe’s Widgets” or “joe” or “widgets” and you’ll get the same result: No POIs Found!

    A rep at TomTom told me that this is normal behavior. That you have to specify the category. I asked what the Search Any POI category feature was for…and he speculated that perhaps they included that because they hope to someday implement it. This is either wrong, or lame. By the way…if you’re looking for a gym, looking under “sports center” which to me sounds more like a soccer field or an basketball arena, etc.

    The text-to-speech is simply horrible. No joke, it’s far worse than the old Speak-n-Spell toy from 30 years ago. Even words like state names are mangled beyond recognition. Furthermore, the speech pattern is jacked - all the words are run together like one long word. Add to that the fact that the individual words themselves are mangled, when you string them together too closely it comes out sounding like someone trying to speak while puking.

    Too bad too - it’s a gorgeous device. I like the way it renders maps - even showing things like roads that pass under bridges, so you can see you’re going to drive under and not over it.

    I’m probably going to return it.