Disappointments
Soutpiel Safari
John & Jenny
Fri 12 Nov 2010 05:09
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We have two very disappointing problems.
One is the mapping software on our Garmin Nuvo 550 which
we bought, after very considerable research, especially for this
trip. We have no problems with the hardware which seems to be
living up to our expectations; it is the Garmin mapping software where the
problem lies. The unit was advertised as coming complete with mapping
software for all of Western Europe. When I registered it online with
Garmin, I was advised that "upgrades were available" and I elected to take the
upgrades. I was then advised that there was insufficient room on the internal
card for upgrades of all of Europe and was then given the option of selecting a
country. I took "United Kingdom and Ireland" and, in practice, the
software for this region proved to be excellent.
Now we are in Spain we find that the mapping software
for this region is primitive and useless for navigation. None of the new roads
is shown, no minor roads are shown and what roads are shown are "stylised" and
not representative of the true course of the road. The result is that the
car's position is hardly ever on the road as marked, but displaced to one side.
This isn't really a problem for us as we have Michelin paper maps and are
sufficiently "old style" navigators to be perfectly at home with paper
products. The problem is a feeling of anger at having been duped by Garmin
to the extent that I consider they are in violation of the UK Trades
Descriptions Act. Fortunately, we shall soon be in Morocco and using the
Tracks 4 Africa electronic maps which other travellers have described as
"brilliant".
The second problem is this Mailasail Web Diary, the
rationale for choosing it being the ability to send messages by Satellite Phone
at times when no Wi-Fi or Internet service was available. We wanted to have the
ability to send short messages on a daily basis so that our families
would know where we were and that we were safe. The process of setting up
the computers for the software and for using the Sat phone was laborious in the
extreme but we were helped through it by Mailasail, albeit at some considerable
phone costs. We were persuaded by Mailasail that it would be advantageous
to upgrade our Windows Vista operating system to Windows 7 but this turned
into a nightmare in Jenny's case with considerable loss of invaluable data by PC
World and loss of computer availability for the 10 days that PC World took to
screw things up.
We ran successful tests at home and all seemed to be
well. However, last night, having been away from a
satisfactory source of Internet for two days, we decided to use the Sat
Phone. We were parked out in the open on the edge of an olive plantation
with the antenna having a clear view of the sky and the connection was made
instantaneously. However, transmission proceeded very slowly and the
Mailasail server eventually stalled after 6-7 minutes, by which I had
wasted $10 achieving nothing. If this is to be the norm we shall not be using
this service by Sat phone much longer. I'm very glad that we adopted a
"belt and braces" approach and set up the alternative blog site on
getjealous.com, which works superbly and is far superior to the Mailasail Web
Diary, the only problem being that we can't send messages by Sat Phone.
There are times when I wonder if we should have just
left the computers at home and just disappeared into Africa with map and
compass.
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