We use Smartnav with little touchscreens at work. I don't have any experience of other automotive sattelite navigation systems, but my experience of smartnav tells me that it has no idea about most 1 way streets, it will sometimes route you up roads that have not existed for 10-15 years, it has no idea where low bridges are, and although recently, our versions have automagically gained the ability to recalculate a route on the fly if you take a turning you were not instructed to (you used to have to navigate the menus and reroute yourself manually), it can take an irritatingly long time when you are under pressure. It is possible to take 30-35 minutes off an estimated journey time of 45 minutes if you know where you are going and ignore what the system says completely.
Updates to the mapping seem to require you to pay for a call to tell them.
We use it for multidrop deliveries within a 15 mile or so radius of a City. The trafficmaster element obviously makes literally no difference whatsoever unless you are using trafficmaster monitored routes, but we do find the system useful for finding our way round parts of town we're not all that familiar with after we've got there.
It can be devastatingly accurate (within 10 yards) in rural areas too. Similarly it can be half a mile or more out, and there's no way of telling till you're actually where it says you should be. This inconsistency is pretty annoying.
M25 shut after explosion on lorryAll eight lanes of a section of the M25 are closed after a lorry containing hydrogen peroxide exploded. The fire is under control on the vehicle which is at junction 13, the exit to Staines...
It suffers from periods, up to several hours or more when it just doesnt't work. As it relies on a mobile phone network and GPS signals, without both at the same time its useless.
Call me a Luddite, but I find that using a map is a much more reliable and confidence inspiring way of getting about.
Douglas
