4m x 3m Omlet pen, cube, new auto door still boxed and coop light

[Old Speckled Hen]

I had to drive across London to find somewhere in SE1 and with only a few "recalculating" hiccups I got there

I didn't have a clue where I was any of the time except when I crossed Tower Bridge and remembered running there in the London Marathon.

Blimey!!!!! I never thought I'd say it but it was wonderful (the satnav not the marathon).

It got me from Hertfordshire, to my destination and out the other side without touching the congestion zone. How great is that?

If it had been hubby navigating we'd still be driving in circles and one of us would have been strangled by now

[Olly]

 

I love my sat-nav - I am usually driving alone, so there's "Ooops, word censored!"ody for me to have a row with, but it has saved me many times from pulling over to the side of the road and bursting into tears! It's one of the gadgets I would never want to be without, mine is wearing out a bit and I will definitely replace it, as it makes driving so much less stressful.

[Space Chick]

I agree I love mine and wouldn't be without it, it has directed me perfectly to some out of the way Chicken Breeders

[Sheilaz]

Yes, I agree. Particularly good in London for warning you which lane to be in for the next junction.

It's not always obvious, and hard to change, in several lanes of heavy traffic, so it's really useful to have those directions.

[Redwing]

I love my satnav too, drections were the only real big thing hubby and argued about - I have thrown hubby out of the car before now!

 

My old sat nav was fab but it did have a thing about Buckingham, you could be in Bristol needing to get to Birmingham and it would say 'lets go via Buckingham!' one in three journeys seemed be be via there

 

That satnav sure loved Buckingham

[Old Speckled Hen]

That satnav sure loved Buckingham

 

Hilarious

Had to check you didn't live there

[Guest]

The only thing is last week I was trying to get to Barts Hospital and my sat nav Tom Tom just stopped and went blank it has done it before in central London?? the high buildings fortunately I recognised St Pauls so knew I wasnt far away! With London just find you have to keep going with the flow! not easy place to pull over due to red route and cameras all over the place

 

Glad you made it!

indie

[Lesley]

They are great for residential areas and ours was fine in London - how worrying Indie

 

The only real problem we had with ours was when we went to visit Omletina and I didn't like the route it was choosing - instead of changing the route we kept ignoring it and waiting for it to recalculate itself........it eventually went into a big sulk, just locked up and we couldn't clear it or turn it off Luckily, Omletina's address gave me a clue as to where she might live and we made it.

[whoopsie]

Satnavs do sulk if they don't get thir own way and they like to take you on magical mystery tours too - you'll get to jour destination EVENTUALLY!

 

mine gets lost too - I always make sure if i'm going on a long journey I do chceck a map as well, just in case. I also shout at it a lot, but then i don't have a hubby to take its place!

 

All that said it really does get you out of a fix sometimes!

[Chook n Boo Mum]

Our old one, a big old brick of a Garmin, was great, but quite slow & getting it to talk to the satellites was a chore sometimes, we got used to going out to the car about 5 mins before we needed to to get it up & running before we left properly ..........our new diddy "top pocket" sized one is wonderful ...still Garmin but so much faster..........calculated home to Darlington in about 10 seconds ....oh that it took that long to get there !!

 

The old one really really didn't like Leeds in the dark on a rainy Saturday night............well actually she was quite happily "recalculating" after trying to send us down the road we had just missed as the whole of Leeds seems to be roundabout leading to roundabout without a breathe to be taken...no wonder she was having problems......and our BPs were sky high by the time we got to the football ground for a birthday party........never have we drunk champers so quickly, we were so relieved to get there

 

I love ours & rarely leave home without it if I'm out of my home zone...........

 

Sha x

[Rhapsody]

I have a Tom Tom with John Cleese voice and its brilliant;the farm pickup has a built in one that appears to have been programmed by Ranulph Fiennes- it isnt happy until it has made you drive down a lane with vegetation growing down the centre of the road and do a tour of someone's farmyard.

[majorbloodnock]

Me, I'm afraid I dislike satnavs. As tools, they're fine, but I have issues with two areas.

 

Firstly, the way the companies who provide the units keep the maps up to date. A satnav is only a small computer, after all, and it'll only do what it's told. If the instructions it's given are faulty, the answer it gives will be faulty. For instance, I live in a road that has this sign...

 

 

above the words "Except for access", yet we get an incredible number of cars, vans and even lorries coming through. When they're stopped and asked, we find it's because that's the way the satnav directed them, which leads me on to point two.

 

Secondly, I'm amazed at the number of people who don't use their satnav as an additional aid within the car, but instead totally devolve responsibility to it. They follow the directions blithely, either failing to look out for or wilfully disregarding physical road signs in preference to what their box of tricks is telling them to do.

 

Overall, I like the theory of satellite navigation, but the practice so often ends up that they're just another excuse for drivers to pay less attention to the road. Not all drivers, of course, but it doesn't take many careless drivers to cause a lot of accidents, and my family has to use the same roads.

[Busybird]

I don't have a Sat Nav as I try not to use my car much (had it out over the weekend to collect kids from various places locally but that was the first time in over a week). When I do have to drive further to somewhere unknown I print off the relevent Google maps and worry a lot

 

A friend of mine (also no Sat Nav) had a lunch meeting last week in an unknown town and got horribly lost. She ended up paying a taxi driver to lead her to her destination which turned out to be 2 streets away

[abwsco]

I have a sat nav and it does have some really stupid moments. Luckily last time it did it I realised it was completely wrong so ignored it!

[The Dogmother]

I know that route through London very well OSH, coudl do it with my eyes closed, but I know what you mean.

 

I resisted getting one for ages, but after trying out a friend's when i was going on a long and complicated trip, I decided it was worth it as I almost always drive on my own. It has saved me lots of time as I don't have to stop and check maps all the time.

 

I never rely totally on it and wil usually just use it for the last, more detailed part of the journey, preferring to use my nouse for getting to the right area.

[C&T]

Secondly, I'm amazed at the number of people who don't use their satnav as an additional aid within the car, but instead totally devolve responsibility to it. They follow the directions blithely, either failing to look out for or wilfully disregarding physical road signs in preference to what their box of tricks is telling them to do.

 

 

 

Couldn't agree more!

 

I have one friend who would drive down the train tracks if the sat nav told her too

 

It can be quite scary sitting in the same car...

[majorbloodnock]

I know that route through London very well OSH, could do it with my eyes closed....

 

And, on the evidence of personal observation, many people do

[The Dogmother]

[docsquid]

I have a SatNav but never use it in the car - it is only when I am cycling or walking particularly off-road, where it is very useful if the weather comes in and you can't see any track or features ahead - then you know you can stay on track, and get to where you want to go. I always keep a fully-charged SatNav with me when walking or rambling, but also always back it up by knowing where I am with a map and compass in case the machine fails. My phone has GPS capabilities but these only work where you have mobile phone reception - and you don't in many wild areas of the UK.

 

When I'm driven by people who have a SatNav in the car I'm always amazed by how much time they spend looking at the SatNav and consequently how little they spend looking at the road. Indeed, one taxi driver almost drove into the back of a car because the SatNav didn't show the car on its little virtual road screen - had had to screech to a halt with us in the back when he suddenly looked at the road.

 

I simple memorise the maps before I go out, and keep a Google Maps printout if I need to stop and consult it as I get nearer the target. And I drive to a lot of unfamiliar places doing personal training at home for people, so I'm not always on familiar roads.

 

Nearly all the SatNavs I know don't recognise our road exists, and therefore can't find us, despite the fact that these houses were built, and therefore the road created, over 40 years ago. We offer people directions when they are visiting us and they refuse, saying their SatNav will find it. It invariably doesn't and we get a panic phone call and we have to talk them in by phone from places often several miles away to which the SatNav has incorrectly taken them.

 

Personally, I can't see the point of them, and if I bought a new car with one fitted as standard I'd ask for it to be removed, or disconnected, as I think it would be a bad distraction most of the time and I don't want to be bothered to switch it off every time I get in the car.

[Lydia]

Well I love my sat nav. I have never ever been able to read maps and consequently the world was very much a closed place for me on my own (to give you an example I have been going to the same hospital for twice a year for 19 years and still don't know the way on my own) My sat nav has given me freedom and confidence and always gets me to where I want to go.

 

Yes they sometimes have stupid moments but much less than humans reading a map I find. And the arguements are less. As to them going out of date, well so do printed maps - you have to keep updating them the same as you have to keep buying new maps. I appreciate there are some people who don't like them, will never like them and have a closed mind towards them but I'd say there was room for the sat navers and the map readers side by side.

[Woodcat]

hey

 

I find my sat nav is a god send. Navigation in this house is always complicated by the fact that 2 out of 3 of us are totally dyslexic and can't tell right from left to save our lives the non dyslexic one panics and shuts the map in moments of stress and one of the dyslexics can not leave the house without getting hopelessly lost.

 

I'm the only one who can actually follow a map moving (not shutting it and losing the page in the center of london )and if i do i get totally car sick and have to stop the throw my guts up.

 

As you have probably guessed navigation use to be terribly stressful. However with the sat nav its easy we don't have to deal with the map being lost or huge screaming rows about which way is actually left.

 

I do agree that some people follow them too much and don't pay attention to the road but i've noticed that actually since we had it whoever is driving pays more attention to the road because we aren't screaming and yelling at each other.

 

Ours needs updating soon but we will be replacing it