TomTom Navigator 5
A couple of weeks ago I posted a comprehensive comparison review of Mapopolis NavCard and TomTom Navigator 2004. TomTom has been coming out with a bunch of new products recently - they've been demoing these at CTIA Wireless 2005 which ends today - including a GPS unit for motorcycles, and two new Bluetooth enabled GPS units for your car.
One product which I've been particularly interested in is TomTom's new software for PalmOS and PocketPC devices because I have their Navigator 2004 software for my Treo 650. Doing a bit of searching on the web, I cam across this great review by Dave Burrows of the software on PocketGPSWorld. I urge you to go read this if you have any interest in this, as it has some great info, such as:
"Existing TomTom Navigator Palm users will notice a change here on the menus. TomTom have included an Advanced planning mode, Itinerary Planning mode, TomTom Weather, Downloads, Call Number just as a few enhancements that you'll notice in TomTom Navigator 5. Some of these features were already available in TomTom Navigator 3 for the Pocket PC like Itinerary, ability to browse a route etc, but weren't available on the new core navigation platform engine until now."
To summarize some of the additional features over the Navigator 2004 that I reviewed, it appears that a previous difficulty in navigating to a POI outside of your current GPS position has been eliminated, there are now more routing preferences, like whether to take the shortest route by distance, or the fastest, to avoid toll roads, etc. There's also what looks to be a powerful route browser that can let you get familiar with your route and change parts of it before you set off. But probably one of the biggest enhancements is the ability to download live traffic data so that you can avoid these before you run into them. It looks like this data comes with a regular subscription fee. When I log into my TomTom account, I can actually see "Traffic" listed as a service and it lists a fee starting at € 9.95 per month and € 49 per year. So I wonder whether this will be available in the U.S., and if so at a similar price?
According to the reviewer, there is no release date yet other than "Spring 2005" and no pricing information, although I'm guessing it will retail for $299 as the 2004 product did. As for an upgrade plan, that seems a little hazier with some initial statements and then backtracking by TomTom (check the review for more details). Hopefully TomTom will at least provide an easy and relatively cheap way to upgrade for those who bought their Navigator 2004 within the last couple of months!