7. Using Other TomTom Plus Services

This menu shows most of the other TomTom Plus services you can access through the Go 700. The blur on the bottom right of the image obscures my personal email address.

TomTom Plus offers a variety of other services including downloads of individual United States city maps, specialized points of interest information, weather reports, new voices to give you turn-by-turn information and map colors options.

USA map downloads are interesting, but not too useful since the Go 700 comes with maps for pretty much all US cities and the maps are the same as you'll find on your GPS, unless it's been years since you updated your Go 700 OS and maps. My guess is that the maps are really for those who don't live in the US coming over here for a visit. European and other maps are also available and should prove valuable for US tourists planning to drive in Europe and places like the Hong Kong and Singapore. Downloading US city maps for a US registered device is free, at least if the maps in your GPS are of the same vintage as the one you want to download. Maps for areas outside of the US cost around 5 Euros or $6.50 US at the exchange rate in effect in early June of 2006.

When setting up a map download you use individual screens to select a specific state or province and city.

Only limited points of interest information is available, in the US, specifically, free location and related information for Baskin Robbins and Dunkin' Donuts stores and locations of WiFi Hotspots included in the JiWire directory at $14.95. JiWire provides information on both free and for-fee hotspots. The company makes money from advertising on its website and from selling hotspot information to third parties and consumers.

Only three points of interest sets are available.

There is a charge for JiWire's Hotspot Information.

Weather reports are supposed to be location specific, based on GPS location. However, the report I got for the West Los Angeles area showed temperatures well below the scorching ones I measured with my thermometer.

New voices are fun, but a novelty that I can do without; same for map colors.

I wish it was that cool in my part of LA at that particular time. The blurry area at the bottom of the screen is my home address. Given the "enemies" my "Who Designed This Crap?" articles have generated, I'd prefer to remain addressless.

The Downloads menu indicates that you can download operating system updates and related maps. When I tried to do this I was told that I needed to go to the TomTom website for updates. I went to the website and discovered that the Go 700 I was testing needed an update. The update was over 10 MB. I now understand why direct downloads of updates to the GPS aren't allowed. At Cingular WAN Edge speeds it would take eons to complete the download. The 10 MB update took a few minutes on my high-speed DSL connection and the update to the Go 700 was quite fast over its USB 2.0 connection to my computer.