Attatood

How many people are actually reading these posts? I bought a GO 720 a few weeks back and am very impressed. It has a LOT of really good features on top of being a very nice looking unit. The only things that I am not happy about is that several features such as text messaging seem to be unavailable for my connected cell phone (LG 8500 - chocolate) although the main feature of hands free calling and access to the TomTom plus services work fine. Also on some secondary highways, it seems to want to occasionally jump off the road and I appear to be travelling through the farmers fields. This is occasional and minor, so the unit seems so far to be a very good one.

IAmLost

Just us apparently. I bought a TomTom Go 920T a few days ago and was hoping to find a GPS forum with discussions about this model to help me learn the ropes about GPS in general and this model in particular. Did a search and can't find any info about the 920T on this forum, maybe too early or this forum is very new. Time will tell.

VR

Attatood

Yep, seems the only discussions I have found are in Europe. Nothing so far from North America anywhere

IAmLost

Well, I'll wander over to a UK forum I see on the Google search list. Although I'm very new at this I'm very impressed with what the TomTom Go 920T can do. My main beef so far is not getting a printed user guide with the unit. I'm going down many a blind alley and learning through trial and error. I find myself drilling down very deep in the different menus to find stuff. I guess with more use and practice it will become more straight forward like all the other electronic gadgets we use daily. Maybe I'll fire up the LaserJet and print out the manual so I can refer to it in the car. I'll also come back here to hopefully find you when I need help. I think the Go 720 and 920 are very similar in features as I recall.

Take Care,

VR

WhichAWay

I think that as more of the North American crowd starts picking up the TomToms, particularly those with higher features, the traffic will increase. I think that is one of the pieces of information that new GPS consumers in the U.S. aren't understanding fully; that the TomToms have made their foothold in the European market. I think that this is leading to a lot of confusion regarding some of the features here in the U.S (such as traffic).

It's obvious that this site is heavily dominated by Garmin. If anyone was to peak at GPS Review : GPS Reviews you would see a great many posts for TomTom. I want the conversations to continue on this forum. There is much that can be learned by me and information we can pass on to others who now have the TomToms.

Some of the topics I would like to start seeing strings on are: SD card interaction with device, the different traffic options and limitations (antenna vs. cell phone data), bluetooth limitations, and how TomTom intends to better support the U.S. market.

I'm enjoying my 720 very much and getting comfortable with the features, how to operate the HOME program, and what hardware and services I need to add on if I want to enjoy the full capabilities of the 720. I am hopefull that TomTom will put as much effort in support and adding features as they have done in Europe.

IAmLost

"Some of the topics I would like to start seeing strings on are: SD card interaction with device, the different traffic options and limitations (antenna vs. cell phone data), bluetooth limitations, and how TomTom intends to better support the U.S. market."

Coincidently I was about to spend some more time converting CD music to mp3 via the iTunes program and from there to my TT720's SDHC card. A little background for you, originally I bought a 920T for my wife to use in the Boston and surrounding areas. Our home has been in North Carolina for the past 4.5 years but we'll move to Massachusetts when our house sells. She took a new job in the Boston area and lives in a hotel during the week and flies home on weekends. Anyway, I had such a good time learning and operating the 920T and getting my wife comfortable with it that I decided to get myself one too. But it seemed to me that the traffic antenna and remote control and European maps, although nice features, were certainly not necessities for me so I cleverly got the 720 instead and now use the 920's traffic antenna and remote control because my wife doesn't miss those things(I find the remote very handy for changing the volume). I recently got two car vent mounts for our units because her suction cup mount refuses to stay put on her rental car's frozen windshields and even here in NC, relatively balmy by comparison, my windshield mount is very untrustworthy. It can be rock solid for days and then suddenly fall off. The vent mounts work great, are secure, and bring the screen to a perfect distance and location for viewing for us. The downside for her is that they are not easy to remove once clipped over the horizontal vent slats.

Last week we got an iPod Classic for her because she needs entertainment on her weekend airplane trips. This is our first iPod and now that we see how many interesting things(movies, pictures, music, books, etc.) can be loaded into them we are kicking ourselves for being such late adopters, as we have been with other things during our 35 years of marriage. For example, microwave ovens and VCR's had been around for about 5-10 years before we got around to trying them. Anyway, back to the iPod. I noticed something in the 720/920 menus about iPod control and sure enough there is a very expensive cable, $29.95, that can connect the iPod to the TT's and play iPod music. So, I've been shopping for a deal on the cable but haven't found a reasonable price yet. I'm happy to report the FM transmitter works great in our cars but I see over at GPS Review that some folks don't have good luck with this feature. I'm also wondering if iPod's AAC coded music will play over the TT or if only the mps type music will play. Do you happen to know?

I've got a lot more to learn about these GPS units but enjoying it so far and amazed how accurate and easy it is to use the TT's when you know how. I make plenty of misteps in the process. For example I discovered that none of our desktops or laptops have card readers that can read the 4GB SDHC cards that I bought. I thought the only way I could transfer mp3 music files to the TT's was via a card reader. So, right after I ordered another so-called "all-in-one" card reader that includes SDHC and XD cards, it occurred to me that maybe the TT's show up as an external device. I was on the right track and then discovered you can access the SD card via the Home program and there you can copy/paste or drag/drop your mp3 files into the TT's mp3 folder on your SD card. It's not easy for this old dog to learn these tricks but it's very gratifying when I finally figure it out.

VR

WhichAWay

I'm fortunate to have the SD reader built into my computer, so I have both options to load my mp3s. I usually use the computer's card reader since I have to first convert my .wma files to .mp3. I'm not an I-Pod person so I'll stay strictly to the .mp3 files and FM transmission. And by the by, I finally found a great place on my radio where I can transmit with no hissing at all. Very clear and am very pleased to have this feature now rather than switching CDs in and out.

One thing I believe I understand a bit more is how the TomTom device works with the SD chip. When I first starting using the SD, I noticed that there were items that weren't being read anymore off the TomTom, the biggest being the computer voice (Susan) with all the street names. Another item that wasn't reading was the Help text for first aid or information on the various contries. It did however continue to read the maps as it should have. What I did, though wasting my SD space, is to copy those files onto the SD chip with the same folder name as what appears on the TomTom drive. Presto, those items did get recognized and now some of these functions are working well whether I have the SD chip in or not.

By chance is anyone using the RDS-TMS to any satisfaction. I'm a little interested from the gadget side of things, but reviews and my own logic made me think that this option is not as handy as it needs to be.

johnjohn

What's curious to me is that you can't play any MP3 off of the SD card. Silly to purchase a 1 or 2 GB SD card and only be able to use 32 MB or so at a time by copying to MP3 folder on Tom Tom. Anyone figure out how to fix this?? My TomTom is a Go720 which I REALLY Love.

TTUser

Create a new folder on your SD card, name it "mp3" and store all your music on it and you're good to go. Alternatively you can copy your mp3 folder from the internal drive to the SD card and add music on it. The unit will retreive the music from the SD card and you will be able to play it in TomTom Jukebox. Enjoy!

johnjohn

That did it!! First I created a new folder on the 1 GB SD Card I have, copied all the MP3 files from the TomTom MP3 folder, went to look at list of songs, double of everything, then I deleted the MP3 folder from the TomTom and only one list.
Something as simple as this should be in the TomTom manual.
Great job with the answer
John

mrtedd

hello ive manged to get the music working with the mp3 folder great.
what do i do for playing ebooks ? please
thank you
yours mrtedd

WhichAWay

mrtedd - if you are speaking of Audiobooks, then you need to make sure that you have a folder on your device, just like your music folder. You need to call this folder 'audiobooks'. Once that is placed on the device or your SD card, then you need to place your audiobook file in there. When you then go to Jukebox, you can select 'Audiobook' and your file should appear.

mrtedd

thank you wichaway il give it ago wheni get time
yours mrtedd

johnjohn

OK, here's another question.
Can the 720 play WMA files??
If not how do I convert "protected" wma files to MP3.
I downloaded WavePad to convert but it says files I want to convert are DRM protected. Digital Rights management. Anyway around this??
John

WhichAWay

To answer the first question, the .wma files will not play on your TomTom which is unfortunate. I've converted quite a few of my music files to .mp3 so I can play them on the TomTom.

My files do not have the DRM protection on them. I'm wondering if this is a license issue with your desktop PC having downloaded the appropriate license agreement for those files. I'm not sure what platform you are working off of, but I'm using XP. So all I would normally do is highlight the .wma files I want to convert, right click on the mouse and select "Convert Audio Format". If you don't have that option then you are likely stuck downloading some conversion software.

The other option I can suggest is re-ripping your CD to your computer and change your settings to have the music rip in .mp3 format. To do this, open Windows Media Player, go to "Tools" and select "Options". Under this you will see a menu with multiple tabs. You will then select the tab labeled "Rip Options". Under that tab, you will be able to select which format you want to rip your music to. Change the format to .mp3. From then on you should be able to copy right from your PC over to you TomTom.

Hope this helps.

Andy

Depending on your system, you may have software that would work to get around the DRM. The sound blaster card I have came with software to record "what I hear". I just play the file with DRM and record it as it plays with the Creative software. I haven't noticed any difference in sound quality.

johnjohn

Thanks for your thoughts, same as mine. Didn't want to waste a CD to get a wma to mp3. This is my best option from other sites i've been on as well.

I'm running on Windows Vista Business.
With some effort, Vista can be made to somewhat behave like XP.