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[Drifter]

TomTom launched version 6.0 on 1 September 2006, although the full retail package is now available, details of and prices of upgrades for existing users are not yet available.

I have had an "evaluation copy " for a few days and can offer Aximusers.com my first impressions.

FIRST OFF........IT WILL NOT WORK ON AN X5. More on that later.

Obviously, the maps are updated and for many this will be a reason to move to version 6, however unlike previous launches , their are no details of how or if upgrades will be offered.

Different to V5.21
In use, TT6.0 differs very little to version 5.21 although it does appear to process addresses faster. It would seem that a lot of work has gone into the map compression as the whole of Europe, Door to Door accross 20 countries is now all within one file that will fit on a 1GB card. I have compared the data in this file to an individual country file ( Benelux) and can see no difference in detail

Menus
Functions and menus are roughly the same, although navigation to postcodes is much improved.

New Functions
TomTom make much of the inbuilt speed warning : This warns you when you excees the speed limit on all but minor roads. Great in theory but in practice

1) The speed is now shown as a pair of numbers in the bottom right corner ie 65/70 for a speed of 65 on a 70 road. If you exceed this by approx 10% the white letters change to Red... This is the ONLY warning.
2) To be of any use, you need to remove most if not all of the other options for the status bar so that the text is big enough to be viseable. Why they did not make the warning itself bigger or give it a sound warning, I'll never know.
3) In use, the speed comparison seems imprecise. Sometimes going red quickly, other times after a long delay.
4) More so than the actual maps, even on a system that is 18 days old, the speed setting on approx 15% of roads are incorrect.

I am surprised that TomTom have not given opportunities to tune the speed warning system and I sense a 3rd party plug in is needed to make good TomTom's shortfall.

"Function switch off" when moving is an interesting thought. When driving, you can set the unit to switch off all but the basic menus to improve safety. However a reset or restart of TomTom returns you to full use, so no real benefit.

Its inbuilt speed camera warning system is supposed to be improved, but in my evaluation copy, this was not possible to enable.

The system has an improved view of directions in that the top of the screen shows a box with Road number and next town, useful on the mototway. This is better,and is supposed to be a representation of the signs you will see. It is nothing like them. ( Car manufacture systems do tend to picture the actual road signs as you would see, so do some competing PDA software so I read from users.)

Conclusion.
Better map technology, and updated maps, but the extra functions promised are a bit of a let down.

Now the key points.

TomTom only state Version 6.0 as being compatible with the X51 and X51V

I can inform you that

1) It does work on the x50 series and is working well on a basic X50 416Mhz
2) It DOES NOT work on an X5. It will install and the graphics work well, but try as you might, you cannot get the sound to work ( Remember the stutter on TT version 5 ??). The installation will not give you the options to select a voice.

Unfortunately, I cannot test it on an x3/x30.

However, for those of us who do not want to abandon the x5 as navigation. I am awaiting an evaluation version of the IGO software which uses the same maps as TomTom but seems to be a little simpler in construction and is stated as compatable with the X3 range.

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