Last week, after coveting my friend's GPS Pocket PC for some time, I purchased the new TomTom One XL car navigation unit. I had used my friend's GPS Pocket PC a few times and liked the Tom Tom software it had and the large screen of the One XL closed the deal.
I was very pleased to find that the One XL is self-installable with an elegant windscreen mount and separate car 12v power adaptor. The TomTom Home PC software installed and functioned surprisingly trouble free on my non-admin Vista x64 PC and connected to the One XL over USB just as easily.
Over the past week of use, I have only managed to crash the device twice (pretty good from my experience with iPods and mobile phones) and there is very little about the TomTom hardware and software combination that I can take issue with. It even connected to my "unlisted" Samsung mobile over Bluetooth to download updates.
My biggest problem with the One XL, which I presume will extend to most GPS devices sold in Australia, is the poor data. TomTom offer subscription services on top the initial purchase of the GPS device. Services like live traffic jam and road work updates, safety (ie speed/red light) camera locations, new Points Of Interest, and TomTom Buddies (a system for locating your TomTom using friends on the map). None of these "PLUS" services are offered in Australia.
Either the local organisations responsible for geographic data in Australia are useless at providing updated information or they try to resell this information at such an expensive price that TomTom can't justify the costs to the smaller Australia customer base. Neither situation would surprise me.
The Bakewell bridge and Glover Avenue have been out of service since October 2006 but are still valid routes in the One XL. Portrush Road, one of few Adelaide roads to have speed limits in the TomTom, still has 25km/h zones that have not existed since the major road upgrades finished over two years ago. The McDonald's and Pizza Hut near my home, that have existed for much longer than two years aren't in the standard POI set while other McDonalds's and Pizza Hut outlets are.
There are the minor afore mentioned issues with the Tom Tom itself too. Automatic time synchronisation assumes Eastern Standard Time instead of Adelaide's Central Standard Time (you'd think a GPS would know I was in South Australia). A planned route recently suggested I perform a U-Turn in the middle of an intersection: a maneuver legal in Queensland but not in South Australia.
Also, as part of the live traffic updates, the TomTom Home software allows the user to enter their own problem traffic areas they want to avoid, however just because Australia can't receive feeds from TomTom, the software won't allow the user to add their own either.
Ultimately though, while there are many issues to consider, the unit really helps with finding parking or getting somewhere new at night when street names are hard to read. I feel much more confident taking long drives to the middle of nowhere too knowing I can easily find my way back or give someone my longitude and latitude coordinates. I have no regrets about the purchase but I am reminded once again that online/data services in Australia still suck.