Which Is The Best Sat Nav Package?

[Guest Moko 1]

I am just about to receive my new Orange M500 and I want to get a Sat Nav package ( software & GPS receiver ) to work in the car with it.

What program would you guys recommend for use in the UK & Ireland? I have looked at CoPilot which apparently has the best coverage of Ireland, but it seems most people are using Tom Tom ( again is Mobile 5 much better than 3 ) so which one should I go for? :?:

[Guest EggZenBeanz]

I am just about to receive my new Orange M500 and I want to get a Sat Nav package ( software & GPS receiver ) to work in the car with it.

What program would you guys recommend for use in the UK & Ireland? I have looked at CoPilot which apparently has the best coverage of Ireland, but it seems most people are using Tom Tom ( again is Mobile 5 much better than 3 ) so which one should I go for? :?:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

TomTom is good, however for IRE mapping it sucks plums. They use tele atals maps who's coverage of IRE is rubbish. People like co pilot use Navteq mapping which is the best out there for IRE and Uk for that matter. I would go for co pilot if mapping coverage is an issue for you.

[Guest andysalmon]

It's not Tom Tom 5 Mobile, it's Tom Tom naviagtor 5 for the MDA Compact. I had TT3 which worked well but maps were very out of date ie new roads etc. I now have TT5 which has nice new spangly maps and is .... crap! The app crashes left right and centre, freezes up the phone side and you cannot plan a route without being hooked up to a GPS. In short I thinks it's pants!!

Turning to the q about Ireland. I visited 3 years ago using Navtech maps. Dublin was covered to street level, as was NI but elsewhere was limited to major routes only. I don't know if that has changed.

[Guest FragMeister]

I've just got TomTom Navigator 5 (including the new tomtom gps receiver 2).

You CAN plan a route without having your GPS on - select "Advanced Planning" on screen 2, and enter departure/destination.

A big word of warning though:

I copied all the files off the 128mb SD card that came with TTN5 onto my 1GB card. All worked ok for a while and then started repeatedly crashing TTN5 (map stopped moving) - and needed a soft reset to fix - not good while driving on M25!! When using the Original TomTom SD card, I have never had any lock-ups.

Over the weekend my 1GB SD card died (I think cos it was writing to it while battery was nearly flat so phone "turned off" the SD slot and has knackered my SD card). Think I will need to reformat it (no files visible although it shows 824mb used within Memory). I dont know whether TomTom was a contributing factor though!

I opted for TTN5 due to the "full postcode" routing. It is no good!

For example, when choosing "Navigate To" for a contact it usually fails to do this without editing the "street" as I think that this is still using the Street/Town rather than the full postcode to navigate to!