Sat Nav News

Effortless Navigation with the Navman S30

If you’re looking for a sat nav that’s easy to use and navigates effortlessly, then the Navman S30 is it. The display is intuitively laid out with crystal clear images and icons. It shows the nearest house numbers as well as the name of the road as you travel and has very clear spoken instructions. With the optional speed camera locations it’s a superb entry-level unit.

Have a good look around the slim design and you’ll find a host of features hidden inside, a comprehensive map of the U.K (other options available) and an intelligent day/night display. This sat nav is for anyone who wants intelligent, powerful navigation at an affordable price.

Latest Innovations From TomTom Sat Nav

Tomtom never fails to amaze with their ongoing new product development. The latest Sat Nav is the TomTom XL Live. This has the option of subscribing to ‘live’ traffic services to keep your jouney as jam free as possible, all on-the-fly. The system also has a built in Google search to find the cheapest petrol prices on the way and has a local business search. This really is the latest in internet enabled integrated services and remains to be seen how well it’s taken up. Also we see the launch of the new Tomtom One V4. It’s a good looking study entry-level model with intuitive easy to use controls and rapid GPS lock-on – a good all-rounder.

Pentagon GPS and Garmin Sport Range

If you’ve been inspired by the recent London Marathon to get off the sofa and put on your trainers then you could do with taking a look at the very latest Garmin GPS training, tracking and sports watches. These watches are a fantastic motivational tool and have been the mainstay training partner of professional and amateur athletes for over five years , becoming an essential addition to the sporting world just take a look at the new Garmin Forerunner 405 and 50 series.

Pentagon GPS and Garmin Sat Nav Red Nose Day

You might be thinking that all the employees at Garmin Sat Nav headquarters have gone mad! Well you could be right but the abundance of red noses has a good cause – yes it’s that institution of an event the great British red nose day and all those at Garmin have been turning up in fancy dress, organising raffles and baking cakes to raise cash for charity. Red nose day is an event where celebrities, politicians and ordinary folk get up to all sorts of mischief and self-deprecation in order to raise extraordinary amounts of money for good causes. Less than a week after the event took place the coffers are nearly touching the £60,000,000 mark, what a fantastic achievement! Pentagon GPS would like to thank all their employees and customers for money they have donated to this year’s event.

Whose your sat nav celebrity voice?

Well we know its valentines day coming soon and just to get us in the mood you can now have Kylie, Claudia or Brad celebrity voices (unfortunately not in person) on your sat nav giving you directions home, it’s a far cry from the serious John and Jane Doe of latter years. On a personal note I’m more a Joanna Lumley (Purdy) and the wife’s likes Connery as the Bond voice- Pay attention 007!

MiTAC buys Magellan Navigation

A shock announcement yesterday emerged with news that Magellan Navigation, the Santa Clara based US manufacturer of GPS devices including the RoadMate, Maestro, Triton, eXplorist and Hertz NeverLost ranges has entered into an agreement to sell its consumer products division to the MiTAC Corporation.Magellan has been strugling in the last few years to develop new products and whilst it remains in third place in the US behind Garmin and TomTom it was slipping badly with poor sales of it’s latest products
MiTAC is clearly choosing the buy out approach in its drive to improve its retail presence having purchased Navman in 2007 and will doubtless hope to take advantage of Magellan’s brand name in the US to improve sales of its products. Using a common product line Mio has chosen to capitalise on the use of brand names in its portfolio where they are better placed than its own. In the UK, Navman’s logo adorns the device whereas in France it is Mio branded and now in the US we can expect to see Magellan logos on Mio hardware.

The new route planner from TomTom sat nav

TomTom has just launched a beta version of their new online route planning system that combines HD Traffic data and IQ Routes™; this allows users to plan their journey by downloading the latest real-time and historic data on traffic flows to give highly accurate arrival times. The system will initially be rolled out to a group of test individuals and if successful shall be available to a wider audience soon afterwards. TomTom’s CEO, Harold Goddijn, said “Users who do not have a navigation device can now also benefit from our high-quality routing before starting their journey, giving them a chance to plan their day more efficiently than ever before.

Speed trap vans should be bright yellow

What’s the difference between a fixed speed camera and a mobile speed camera? Ever thought about it? Well the answer is in fact quite obvious; ones always painted bright yellow and the other usually isn’t.

Whatever your reason for why might this be? Painting police speed-camera vans the same eye-catching colour would improve road safety and that’s straight from the campaigning group Safe Speed.

According to the group’s co-founder Claire Armstrong, all ‘Speed camera vans should be the same. Identical. One bright fluorescent orange or yellow with the same markings. Then motorists will always know what they are – and they may be a deterrent.’ Going on to say that all motorists know a red light means stop and a green light go wherever they are.

It seems a national directive on consistency is needed if indeed ‘safety’ is the objective of mobile speed camera vans.