New TomTom owner

[grumpymike]

Hello everyone,

I just bought my tomtom one yesterday. This is my first GPS and I'm looking forward to never having to stop to ask for directions again (not that, being a man, I ever did anyway ).

I'm quite happy with what the Tomtom One can do...it seems to have a lot of features for such an inexpensive unit. My one worry, however, is that the routes it has chosen for me so far are far less than optimal. So I'm hoping there may be information here that can help me program the unit to avoid routes that I know are filled with red lights and slow moving traffic.

Thanks,
Mike

 

[dhn]

Hello everyone,

I just bought my tomtom one yesterday. This is my first GPS and I'm looking forward to never having to stop to ask for directions again (not that, being a man, I ever did anyway ).

I'm quite happy with what the Tomtom One can do...it seems to have a lot of features for such an inexpensive unit. My one worry, however, is that the routes it has chosen for me so far are far less than optimal. So I'm hoping there may be information here that can help me program the unit to avoid routes that I know are filled with red lights and slow moving traffic.

Thanks,
Mike

Welcome. First, make a complete backup of your unit using Explorer, not TTHome. Keep it in a folder on your hard drive.

Also, no GPS ever is as good as local knowledge. The real worth of a GPS is how good it is getting you to places where you do not know the local roads and shortcuts, etc.

 

[GaryW]

One XLS Text to Speech

I just bought a TomTom 1 XLS, today, after looking at it, and the Garmin products. It seems really cool after just a little use. But one thing I don't seem to be able to get working is the "announcing streets by name" (i, text to speech). Where do you go in the system to turn that on, please. Can anyone help??

 

[dhn]

I just bought a TomTom 1 XLS, today, after looking at it, and the Garmin products. It seems really cool after just a little use. But one thing I don't seem to be able to get working is the "announcing streets by name" (i, text to speech). Where do you go in the system to turn that on, please. Can anyone help??

This is assuming your model is capable of text to speech ...

You need to have selected one of the computer voices to make TTS work.

If you don't see one when you go to Preferences>>Voice Preferences and scroll the choices (the computer voices do say 'computer') or, if when scrolling, the computer voice choices are greyed out, then what you need to do is this.

Connect your unit to the computer. Start TTHome. Go to Add Maps/Voices, on the next screen click the right arrow and you should get to a screen with an icon, Computer Voices. Select it. Now, you should see what's available (there are 4 English choices, 2 m and 2 f).

The screen will say the voice is either on your computer or can be downloaded. Choose one and select install.

 

[grumpymike]

Welcome. First, make a complete backup of your unit using Explorer, not TTHome. Keep it in a folder on your hard drive.

Also, no GPS ever is as good as local knowledge. The real worth of a GPS is how good it is getting you to places where you do not know the local roads and shortcuts, etc.

Thanks for the welcome, DHN! And thanks for the advice about backing up. I'm itching to ask why, but I'm sure digging into the forum will yield an answer.

I guess I just need to realign my thinking about what a GPS is good for: getting you someplace even if it takes the long way most of the time.

I'm hoping that routes will improve using highways than what I've seen with secondary roads.

 

[dhn]

Thanks for the welcome, DHN! And thanks for the advice about backing up. I'm itching to ask why, but I'm sure digging into the forum will yield an answer.

I guess I just need to realign my thinking about what a GPS is good for: getting you someplace even if it takes the long way most of the time.

I'm hoping that routes will improve using highways than what I've seen with secondary roads.

Don't forget our choices for planning a route: 'Fastest' may show you using highways while 'shortest' may indeed fewer miles (or kilometers) but slower.

Also, there's the option about how to deal with toll roads.

 

[Robm]

Welcome to the forum. You will find lots of great info here

 

[unpltd]

Welcome, looks like your haveing fun already