For newcomers

At the bottom of each post there is the word "comments". If you click on it you will see comments made by followers, and if you follow the instructions you may also comment and I always welcome that. I have found many people overlook this part of the blog which is often more interesting than the original post!

My blog nick-name is SIR HUGH. I'm not from the aristocracy - my middle name is Hugh which relates to the list of 282 hills in Scotland compiled by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891. I climbed my last one (Sgurr Mor) on 28th June 2009

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Sunday 16 January 2011

The demise of Tom Tom, a good friend

In November 2006, after installing sliding doors for my brother, on returning home I received a Tom Tom car navigation GPS: an unexpected gift.
The sliding doors - note the wine rack - just the tip of the iceberg. The doors at this point had yet to receive the pelmet.


Although I do not travel extensively around the country I have used TomTom more than I anticipated, and now regard it (her) with affection.Yesterday I  fired up my friend to navigate to an address in Barrow-in-Furness (don’t go there unless you have to). Tom Tom remained dormant.
After searching the Internet I guessed a new battery may restore life, but also learned that a special tool is required to open her up.
At Sunday opening time (10:00am), I was at Halfords in Kendal. The  sales chap asked me how long I had owned Tom Tom. When I said “three or four years” he said he had learned from the manufacturer, to his own surprise, that this was, disappointingly, the predicted lifespan. He said, apologetically, I may send it back for repair but the cost would be high.
I ended up buying a new” Garmin nüvi 1300”. I recently commented on the name Neutrino given to my new RAB sleeping bag, so what about this one -”nüvi” I mean? Google informs me that Garmin is, drearily, a composite of parts of the two surnames of the company’s founders, but Google fails on”nüvi”; I suspect it is a made up name, but if so what are the connotations, or what is it saying?
Selling a gadget like this for around £100 without informing buyers that its expected lifespan is so short seems like criminal deception to me.
The old friend and her replacement

1 comment:

  1. I too looked up nüvi, imagining the umlaut might make things easier. But no go. Just a marketing ploy - meaningless but possibly memorable.

    I think it is possible to address a satnav as a person since that's how one reacts during the early weeks ("By not taking the next right, as she suggests, I run the risk of irritating her.") Eventually this tendency dies away to be resurrected when a new passenger behaves in exactly the same way. By then the reaction has become remarkably irritating.

    I always have mine switched to the woman's voice. Can't stand having a chap boss me about.

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