Magellan GPS: Get your own TomTom newsgroup already!

Andrew wrote: 

Haven't you taken at least one class on Economics? In the first week
you will hear this:

"Supply produces its own demand"

I take it from your answer that you don't know about the existence of:

alt.satellite.gps.garmin
alt.satellite.gps.magellan

They are very useful and active. Are TomTom users second class
citizens?

-Ramon

Ramon F Herrera wrote: 

You have to change brands occasionally to keep any company from taking
over the market and having a monopoly. I shifted from Magellan to
Garmin for handhelds this past summer. Imagine my surprise when my 76Cx
also wound up also replacing Tom Tom Navigator 5 on a PDA on my
motorcycle and in the car.

The first time I saw the software on a garmin c330 I thought "Damn!
That looks a lot like Tom Tom!". Sure enough, I hear that Tom Tom is
suing Garmin to in the EU protect its "look and feel".

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/16/tomtom_takes_garmin_to_court/

About the same time Garmin jumps on Tom Tom here in the U.S. for patent
infringements but, for the most part, loses its case:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/28/tomtom_wins_us_lawsuit/

Then Tom Tom either loses or does not win the EU case because the Dutch
judge found the Tom Tom Go models to have a more round/less angular shape:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/02/tomtom_loses_design_case/

But how about the Garmin software look and feel? I was thinking that
look and feel of the Garmin "i" and "c" series has a lot in common with
Tom Tom's models. But then the Tom Tom look and feel was not unique, it
looks much like all the NavTeq implementations seen in various
automobile built in systems, Dell Axims, and a number of other
implementations.

Maybe in the end they'll all agree to quit fighting. And then they'll
all raise all their prices to pay off the legal fees.
 

Why so? Just because they don't record tracks? Or give you a desktop
app for uploading routes? The Tom Tom software is better than many of
the new Garmins in that you can get complete control of routing with
their itinerary planning feature.

If Tom Tom added track recording and a desktop application for
displaying the mapping, planning routes, and uploading, they would
improve their market appeal in my opinion.

In the meantime, Garmin is simplifying the navigation capabilities on
some of their newer models and not giving you the desktop app and
mapping for preloaded units unless the consumer asks for it. Looks to
me like Garmin is trying to turn its customers into technological
illiterates.

Garmin can't trick me though. No multiple destination routing, no sale!
No track recording, no sale!

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA (jackerbes at adelphia dot net)
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine dot com)