Believe it or not, I’ve been working for my current employer for 20 years¹. Loyalty like that is a rarity these days (or could I just not find anything better elsewhere)? Anyway, they’ve given up on handing out watches and simply give out gift vouchers instead (although a generous amount, I should add).

I’d been thinking for a while of replacing my aging TomTom One v2 – I was attracted to the larger screens and IQ routes features on more modern versions. I thought I’d get a TomTom One XL IQ, as this covered the bases, although secretely I’d have ideally liked one of the better models. Well, these vouchers were all I needed to upgrade my aspirations! I could use my vouchers at Halfords, and as they had a sale on at the time, it sounded ideal.

After much searching of reviews and looking at specifications, I narrowed it down to the TomTom GO 540 or the 730.

The 730 is the more “up market” model, but is the not the most recent. Halfords were actually selling this cheaper than the 540.

However, the 540, or more precisely the 540 Live, had one thing that I wanted and that the 730 lacked – voice control. My new car has a very steep sloping windscreen so to secure it in its ideal position at the bottom of the screen would put it out of reach. Of course, you still have to press an on-screen button to activate the voice control but the purcahse of a bluetooth remote would eliminate the need to even do that.

Anyway, I weighed up the reviews and general pros and cons, and finally decided to go for the 540. The Live services (at £7.99 a month) are steeply priced but offer regular traffic updates, amonst other things. After now using the 540, however, I feel compelled to try and find the money each month to pay for the Live services.

The only thing left bugging me is the on/off technical support from TomTom – they’ve often responded to me quickly on most questions but when it comes to swapping over the map update services (that I’m paying for) to the new device, they haven’t responded in over a week – even when I’ve updated the support call with a prompt.

At this point I thought I should make mention of a website I came across whilst searching for reviews. TestFreaks pulls together reviews from all over the ‘net – important technical publications as well as user reviews. I hadn’t come across them before and have now bookmarked them for future. In fact, I’ve even created a Firefox search engine for their site as well, which is available from my download page, as well as the MyCroft site.

Update: And now a mention from TestFreaks. Thanks!

1. yes, yes, I started when I was 12 [↩]

An apt description of my drive to work. Thankfully it was early and traffic was light. I took my time and drove carefully. The snow outside is a lot, lot worse than at the beginning of the week and it’s continuing to come down.

Unfortunately, it was all let down by selfish drivers. On icy roads the last thing you want is for other drivers to not indicate properly, causing you to have to brake unnecessarily. Or to tail-gate you.

You’d also expect other drivers to take the weather into account with regard to how they react to other drivers on the road. So, when I was coming down a hill about to take a tight turn onto a junction, you’d expect other drivers to expect that manoeuvre to potentially go a bit, erm, wrong. Which it did. My back end slid out and I did a nice wide arc towards the junction. So why in the name of blither did the person coming up that road towards the junction not hold back? Why did he drive right up to the junction, right in my way? Thankfully I gained control and missed him. But even my mid-slide gesture for him to get out of the way was met with blank looks. Unbelievable.

Anyway, at work in one piece. The snow has now stopped and it’s beginning to thaw already. Apparently warm rain is due.

And during all of this, the Vodafone and Orange mobile networks have been flaky (probably due to the number of texts and phone calls). O2 appeared fine, however.

Some time ago, probably a few years now, the company I worked for removed individual bins from under their desk and replaced them with recycling points dotted around the office. These consist of a series of bins where items can be separated – different bins for different areas, but usually, at least, a general bin for “miscellaneous” disposal. Even at the time this seemed a little odd because it might going out of your way each time you want to throw away an apple core, sheet of paper of paper cup¹. Of course, there’s probably 2 reasons for these changes…

1. They have a third party contract for cleaning. I suspect not having to empty individual bins around the office saved them quite a bit of money
2. It’s environmentally sound

Which of these you think was the priority depends on how cynical you are I guess.

Anyway, I brought in my own bin for general waste. I provide my own bags and empty it myself. Recyclable materials I take to the appropriate bins. It remains environmentally friendly and doesn’t cost anything more for cleaning costs.

None-the-less I have been hassled by management ever since. Yesterday it happened again with a threat of confiscation² so I’m taking it home. I’ve had enough. I’ll just pile my apple cores and yoghurt pots up on my desk. Nice. And one more hit against my work morale.

1. and odder still as 2 of those 3 items they don’t recycle – not food waste, including tea bags, or paper cups [↩]
2. how does this work if it’s your own property? [↩]