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by Ben Last.
Original Post: General Purpose Is A Bad Idea
Feed Title: The Law Of Unintended Consequences
Feed URL: http://benlast.livejournal.com/data/rss
Feed Description: The Law Of Unintended Consequences
'Course, I don't necessarily believe that, but it's a good premise to think about. Musings on very cool dedicated devices.
I get lost. A lot. This is not something to which most blokes[1] will readily admit, but I'm past caring. I'm okay at remembering routes when I've driven them a few times, but a couple of wrong turns and I've had it. If there were a Directionless Anonymous for those of us who are navigationally challenged, I'd be there, standing up and muttering my name and confessing: "I'm Ben, and I can't tell you how to get from here to the A50."
So for a good while now, I've suffered from SatNav Envy. My boss, for example, has one in his Not-Really-An-SUV. My dad has one in his Not-Really-Compensating-For-Turning-Sixty-Mobile. A couple of weeks ago I swear I saw one installed in a Robin Reliant[2]. So, when flicking idly through the latest issue of Empire, I saw an ad for this, I did something I never do when reading a magazine. I stopped and looked at the advert.
Now, cynical Brit as I am, I believe only a certain amount of product blurb; pretty much I believe the name and maybe the price. The rest I assume is hype, marketing guff and general flimflam to persuade me that I should covet the items displayed before me. So I went in search of comments from real users, via Google. And boy, did I find them. They glowed. They praised. They were, to sum it up, as chuffed as it is possible to be after shelling out over £400. And so, prepared to eBay the damn thing if it failed to live up to my dreams, I bought one. It sits beside me now. And it's wonderful.
Well, let's define wonderful; in this context, it means does what it's advertised as doing and does it well. But what really interests me is that it's a computing product. Inside the actual Go is a 200MHz ARM920T running a Linux-based OS. But it's not, in any real sense, open. Sure, you can add in extra sets of data via the memory card, but this is a dedicated device of the best sort. What it does, it does beautifully.
Previous TomTom products have been PDA-based. Makes a certain sort of sense - a PDA is a general purpose computer that's designed for portability, but I balked at shelling out for an iPaq or the like just so I could navigate. I mean; I already carry a smartphone and a laptop. I don't want another personal digital whatsit to tote around. There seems to be that same old trend re-emerging; the towards the idea of unified devices. Remember the combined PC and Megadrive? The several attempts to fuse a TV and a PC? These days it's phones that are also mp3 players (with pitiful amounts of storage). Don't like 'em, don't want one. I like dedicated devices, like the Go.
Anyway, if you really want to know more product details, go readthe many reviews. Cheapest UK price is Amazon. Enjoy. Me, I'm off to listen to it telling me how to get downstairs to the kettle.
[1] Translation for Americans - bloke = guy. In the male sense. [2] Further translation for Americans - the Robin Reliant was/is an incredibly cheap three-wheel fake imitation car substitute sold in the UK. It had all the style that's associated with the 1970s and was as stable as you'd imagine a three-wheeled vehicle to be. Naturally, it's now has a cult following.
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Well, let's define wonderful; in this context, it means does what it's advertised as doing and does it well. But what really interests me is that it's a computing product. Inside the actual Go is a 200MHz ARM920T running a Linux-based OS. But it's not, in any real sense, open. Sure, you can add in extra sets of data via the memory card, but this is a dedicated device of the best sort. What it does, it does beautifully.