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When I was testing a TomTom One that a friend owns I found that the fastest route algorithm apparently has a speed of about 40 mph for any road other than an interstate. It calculated the route from north of Houston to Austin to go almost to San Antonio so that it stays on interstates, with a time of 4 1/2 hours. Driving on US 290 takes about 3 hrs. Using a waypoint on US 290 I got it to route that way and calculated a time of almost 5 hours for 167 miles. The speed limit is 70 mph most of the route.

Is there any way to alter this? Why doesn't the TomTom know speed limits?

Looking to buy, but this is not reassuring at all.

There is more to travel time than speed limits, including traffic and traffic lights. It's not practical to know traffic and speed limits when calculating a route. 40 mph on other than interstate is not that unreasonable.

Funny response, I guess you must be joking. Around here I can go 100 miles on a state highway, speed limit 70, and not hit a stoplight, never slow down. Rather useless to me with this defect, I'll chose another brand.

See link:http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2527 for discussion including TomTom support response.

TomTom uses Tele Atlas as its map provider, and it has no speed limits in its database. It is impossible for TomTom to do better than guess. Not acceptable.

Garmin uses NavTeq, which does have speed limits in its database. I'll check them out.

The only speed limits in Garmin's database are for some (perhaps most) interstates. They don't show for other roads. And only on the 7xx and (I think) 8xx models.

It would be a nearly impossible feat to compile and manage the actual speed limits for all the roads in the database. And what happens when the locality changes the speed limits?

The speed on a particular road may change several times along it's route. The speed limit on the interstate between my city and a major city one hour to the north changes about 6 times in that span.

Local roads can change even more and can be at the whim of local law makers who change frequently.

This is any extremely massive amount of data that would have to be compiled, verified, and then maintained. Nearly impossible. And when it becomes out of date, users will complain that their unit gave them the wrong information.

It's important to understand how most GPS units calculate the route time. Roads are classified by type. The units use the average speed for these road types to calculate the time. Speed limits typically do not come into the equation.

TomTom really works, I use it for long trips. And it never lets me down.

Does anyone have Media Center for TomTom from Mobilnova, as far as I know it allows to watch movies and play games on TomTom. I just wanted to know if it distracts your attention when you drive?

Thanks for reply.

Mobi, you must be on another MobileNova guerrilla marketing campaign. I've never seen a single real user ask about purchasing your software for their TomTom, but I've seen several posts from representatives of your company pretending to be normal users and extolling it's virtues. If your software was that good, you wouldn't need to have make-believe users.

My apologies to the mods, but if you check the IP, it's almost guaranteed to be in Belarus, oddly enough the home of MobileNova. I think they've posted fake reviews and inquiries in every gps forum so far.

gatorguy wrote "Mobi, you must be on another MobileNova guerrilla marketing campaign. I've never seen a single real user ask about purchasing your software for their TomTom, but I've seen several posts from representatives of your company pretending to be normal users and extolling it's virtues. If your software was that good, you wouldn't need to have make-believe users.

My apologies to the mods, but if you check the IP, it's almost guaranteed to be in Belarus, oddly enough the home of MobileNova. I think they've posted fake reviews and inquiries in every gps forum so far".
Thank you for reply. Actually, there are a lot of active topics about Mobilnova's software on different gps forums, and they were started by normal users. And there is no need to force users to speak about Media Center for TomTom, because this software is the only one which supports all models of TomTom devices.