[gps-talkusers] GPS FRUSTRATIONS

Hi Guys

I am glad that Mary Ellen had such a successful time with her relatives and her 
GPS. 

Last weekend I arranged to meet my family at an unfamiliar restaurant and was 
badly let down by the GPS. Firstly, a POI search failed to find the restaurant. 
It must be the only Greene King establishment that is not listed. Secondly I 
could not locate the address. The address as given on the restaurant web site 
was Windsor Road, Winkfield. In the text on the site it explained that it was 
on the edge of the village two miles from Ascot on the A332. So I tried to find 
the address by setting the city as Winkfield and the street as Windsor Road. No 
Windsor Road in Winkfield nor was there an A332. So I tried the same with Ascot 
with no results. I eventually find Windsor Road in Bracknell Forest which is 
the local government name for the area. However, this did not help as the 
Postcode for the pub was not one of those listed for Windsor Road. 

Having failed to find the pub on an address lookup I decided to leave it and 
check the results when we got there. It turned out that the bit of Windsor Road 
I needed was not listed as Windsor Road but as the A332 and the city was the 
local government area of Windsor and Maidenhead. I am not certain whether or 
not Telemap have got the administrative boundaries right but a lot of local 
knowledge would have been required to unravel this.

I think my experience illustrates how important it is that we get a post (ZIP) 
code facility for setting destinations as soon as possible. 

I experienced a lot of problems with trying to give directions at roundabouts. 
Although to be fair most of the roundabouts in the Bracknell Forest area are 
very small amounting to little more than pimples in the road. They are so small 
that by taking the right route a driver hardly has to turn at all. The 
instruction turn left on to roundabout and turn right exiting roundabout 
Berkshire Way could not be read in the fraction of a second it took to 
negatiate the roundabout. Again this illustrates the importance of getting the 
roundabouts right. 

Finally, I am not sure if this is a Sendero GPS issue or a BrailleNote issue. I 
seem to be having problems with buffers not being cleared properly. This 
manifests itself by the fact that I often seem to have the end of earlier 
messages tagged on to new messages and some times I do not get the whole of a 
street name in braille. I am using a Braillenote 18 running 7.2 but probably 
not the latest build. However, the buffering problem pre-dates the last 
upgrade. 

Steve

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