I wrote before about my TomTom Go 700 portable GPS system. Now I've graduated to the newer version, the TomTom 910. I hadn't expected to make the jump so soon, but a number of things came together to push me toward this nice new device.

My old TomTom Go 700 was great, but maps were only for Europe. As a result, I depended on using TomTom Navigator 5 on my Dell Axim PDA for trips to the US, since I have US maps for that. Sadly, on my last trip, I made the mistake of plugging the car charger not into the PDA cradle but instead into the Bluetooth GPS receiver. Smoke, literally smoke, came out of it as I put 12 volts into a socket that only wanted 5 volts.

Ouch. There went my solution for GPS when driving in the US. Of course, perhaps it was fate. I was well tired of using my PDA for satellite navigation. You have to hook up the PDA cradle to the windshield, then plug the charger into the cradle, then put the PDA in the cradle, then run the cable from the charger into the Bluetooth receiver, then plug the sound cable from the PDA into the cradle....hassle. With an all in one Tom Tom, you hang it on the windshield, plug in the charger if you really want, and you're done.

More fate. Soon after this happened, the new TomTom range was announced. While I was debating an upgrade, a friend said he was interested in getting a TomTom Go 700 for trips between England and France. So now he's off using my old TomTom, while I'm driving along with the new one. Gotta love fate!

Some links, then some comparisons between the two devices, from my perspective. Product info is here. Pocket GPS World has a very nice review here: Inside the TomTom GO 910. And that done, here are my thoughts.

The first reason I wanted the TomTom 910 was that it has both European and US maps stored on its 20 GB hard drive. That gives me a solution for both countries -- as well as Canada, Guam and the Canary Islands!

It also locks on to satellites faster. My old TomTom could take a couple of minutes to get going from a cold start. The new one only takes seconds. Nice!

It's slightly smaller and has a widescreen. Widescreen, square screen -- doesn't make that much of a difference to me, but the smaller size for carrying is nice.

The new version can do RDS-TMC, which means listen to regular radio transmissions for traffic alerts and keep me notified. The bad news is, that's not built in. You have to buy an external antenna, which is annoying. And you can't even buy them yet at all. Keep a watch for when they are offered here.

The new version can play MP3 files. I'll come back to this, but it's very handy. Unfortunately, the interface for adding music sucks. You either have to select individual songs to copy across (hmm, which of my hundreds of tracks will I select one by one) or you copy across playlists. I don't have playlists, but I'll have to start making these to move music to the TomTom faster. It would be nice if you could see songs by albums or artists and tick across selections that way. (Note -- it's also pretty likely that simply browsing to the TomTom in Windows Explorer will allow you to drag and drop music. Haven't tried it yet, but a quick look makes me hopeful).

You can also put pictures on it (and with a third party hack covered in that Pocket GPS World article, even play movies). I put a few pictures on the device, but it wasn't a killer feature for me.

Speed camera locations -- now that was a killer feature. It comes with a list of known speed cameras for various countries, including the UK. There were ways to put this into the old TomTom, but now it's built in and much easier to use.

How's it working so far? I've done three trips so far in the run up to the real hammering it will get on my upcoming US trip.

My first trip was from Heathrow out to Wiltshire. I'd got my TomTom from Dixons in the duty free area, hence me using it to get me back from the airport even though I know the way cold. I just wanted to see how it worked.

I pre-plotted a route, to test if selecting points of interest had improved. I wrote previously how annoying it was that there was no way to search by name for points. Now you can. Choose Navigate To, Point Of Interest, POI Near You (or another option), then Any POI Category, then within a set range (say 150 miles near you), then start typing letters to see if there's a match for what you're looking for. Doing this found Stourhead, something that puzzled me with the TomTom 700 earlier this year. It could be a heck of a lot easier, but it's at least possible now. And locating Heathrow was a heck of a lot easier :)

Route planning is fast, and off I went. It quickly starting flagging speed cameras on the M25, giving me chimes and then showing a countdown to them. Very handy. The only downside is that it didn't know construction is done near Heathrow and so the 40 MPH restriction is gone. Instead, there's a variable speed limit that is shown by signs. So it warned me I was speeding, when I wasn't. Keep checking those signs.

I love a new feature that shows you the speed limit of roads you are traveling on, if these are known. But I hate the fact that if you go more than five miles per hour above that limit, it changes to a red color and starts flashing.

Say you're on the motorway. It would show you something like this: 68/70. That tells you you're going 68 with a limit of 70. Now if you step up to 75, it shows you this: 75/70. But instead of white text, it changes to very hard to read deep red and begins flashing. I wish there was an option to disable this, but so far, no luck.

I quickly noticed something many people are commenting on -- mount droop. Slowly, the monitor starts to droop on its mount. It's easily corrected with a gentle push up, but it's not something you should have to do. And toward the end of my trip, when I went from the motorway to B roads, a big bump made it drop almost straight-down. In addition, a big bump -- or when you'd put the unit back up, would cause it to disconnect from the power supply contacts in the mount. It's not a big deal for me, but those with older 910s had a big problem because a power disconnect would cause the unit to go off. New software has fixed this.

I'll come back mount issues in a bit, but back to my first trip. The TomTom can also interact with your phone (or phones, it can remember several), just as the old one can. If you have the right phone (I don't), it will even read text messages to you. This is because it has a new computerized voice, rather than just the prerecorded ones.

The computerized voice is also handy because it will read road names to you. The convinced me to leave behind my old voice Jane, with her nice British accent, for Kate. Kate's also British, she's just a computerized voice. She sounds pretty good, though I feel some guilt over having left Jane behind.

Kate's funny, though. She kept calling the motorway the freeway. Now being a Californian, that kind of made me happy. But it feels wrong. When in Britain, I call them motorways -- and so should British Kate. But this might be because although I chose a British voice, my language preference is set to English US rather than English UK. Someday, maybe I'll even test this to find out.

Kate's also funny in that she says road numbers incorrectly. Well, just differently. Say you're on the A303. Everyone will call that the Three Oh Three. But formal Kate, she calls it the Three Hundred Three. On a B road, she starts getting into thousands. I can't wait to get back to Southern California and see if she calls the 405 the Four Hundred and Five rather than the Four Oh Five.

My second trip was an easy run to the local leisure center. Again, I knew the way -- I just wanted to test things out. I always take the GPS down and even remove the mount for security reasons. So when heading back home, I had to put it back into place. That's easy, but then I was shocked to watch the unit fall off the windshield. I put it back up again, taking care to make sure it was twisting it the way it should. Down it came again, and this time the splash screen didn't go off. No menu, no nothing.

Great -- I was annoyed that the mount clearly doesn't work well, plus that perhaps the hard drive was now crashed. A reset button was nowhere in sight, and pushing the main power button didn't help.

When I got home, I discovered that to reset the unit, you have to turn it upside down, then there's a hard-to-find reset slot where a paper clip can be used. Fortunately, pushing that was all I needed to get the unit going again.

Still, the mount issue was a problem. Going online, I came across plenty of people reporting issues. The article I mentioned earlier talks about this, as well. I didn't know if I wanted to keep the device with these problems.

TomTom's clearly aware of these issues. For one, they've had to make special page completely with video to explain how to use the mount. That illustrates it's a bad mount, not that all the TomTom users are idiots, I'd say.

For two, I wrote them using the online support system asking about the issue.

I've just purchased the TomTom 910 and had it fall off the windshield twice even though it was connected properly. In addition, any bump, and it starts to slip. I understand many are having similar mount problems. What's the status of shipping a better mount? I love my old TomTom, want to love the new one, but the mount problems are a serious issue and I may have to return the device

Within a day, I got this reply:

It would seem your mount is at fault and we will have another one sent to you.

And then after I submitted my address, I was told I'd be sent this:

TomTom GO 510/710/910 Mount incl. Docking Shoe (no POR) [L]

I don't know if this means I'm getting an improved mount or just another one like I have already. I'll do a follow up when it arrives -- unfortunately, not in time for me to use on my upcoming trip.

My third trip was an hour drive up to the International Air Tattoo north of Swindon. By this point, I'd loaded up some music and was curious to see how that worked.

Touch the screen, and there's a Music & Photos icon on the first menu that comes up. Select TomTom Jukebox, and you get another screen showing playlists, plus options for artists, albums, songs, genres or audiobooks. Even though you can't move music over by artist or album, once in TomTom, it at least organizes them this way using your MP3 tags.

Pick your options, and the music starts playing out of the unit. It's a bit tinny, but it's workable and will be handy for those times when I'm in a rental car or something.

Actually, it's better than that. I hooked up my FM transmitter that I use for my iPod to the unit's external port. Boom -- really good quality music was now flowing out of my car stereo. Even better, when navigational instructions come on, the music pauses, then picks up from where it left off.

I'm looking forward to trying things out more on my next trip. I even downloaded Bodie The Surfer Voice for free to get ready.

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