Reliability of the Tomtom Rider
 

Next spring, I want a GPS on my bike.
The Tomtom Rider is rather cheap now compared to a Garmin (I can buy one for €400) but I would like to know how reliable it is.
I have heard good and bad stories but I value the opinion of the people on this board so I wouild like to know;
Is there anyone on the hubb who has a Tomtom Rider for more then a few months and wants to share his good or bad experience?

Before you splash out on the TomTom take a look at the Garmin 2610. It's just been discontinued and there are some good deals around:

http://www.gpsw.co.uk/details/prod3267.html

The 2610 may not have the pretty 3D map display of the TomTom, but the screen is larger and it has a more extensive range of features. The Garmin packages also includes full Euro mapping - the TomTom only comes with your home country. They reduced the mapping coverage when they dropped the prices on the TomTom, which is worth considering if you do a lot of touring.

This thread should be enough to put you off TomTom: http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84987

Go for a 2610!

Tim

Pete,

I would like to know if the Rider is reliable in the long run.
I'm sure it will work fine new from the box but how does it perform after a few months on a bike.
I heard stories about people loosing the Rider due to the bad mounting hardware, people complain about a spontanious reset etc so I would like to find out if this are incidents or structural problems before I buy one.

Rider
 

I've been using the Tom Tom Rider for quite a while now - did the whole of the UK with it last year and added the France map for a few day trips - the cradle is not the greatest - for my trip to Russia (http://journeytorussia.co.uk) I'm going to buy the Touratech mount for it - nice and sturdy and lockable.

http://www.touratech.de/Shop_uk/ente...tml&lang=en-us

The Rider has been fantastic, I've bounced it up the road several times and the add on software you can get for it now (like logging) is really getting good.

Maps wise - if you have the old one (like me) then you can buy the whole European Map for 99 euros and Eastern Europe and Western Russia for 59 Euros - just need a SD card that's big enough...

m

Rider
 

Have been using mine on a bike (Africa Twin) and in my car and it works well, no problems. The cradle isn´t the sturdiest and I think I will buy the Touratechs lockable unit ( or fabricate my own version).
To improve the function check out this site:http://www.webazar.org/tomtom/plugins.php?lang=uk as the software makes the Rider even better.:biggrin:

Yes I've been playing with that myself - once I worked out you needed google earth pro to make the mapping work! The logging stuff is fantastic and I plan to use it to chart our progress on our website - http://journeytorussia.co.uk - when we leave for Russia in September... what I like about the Tom Tom is that it has a [turn on geek filter] linux underbelly - which means that I can get in there and fiddle - the logging app is fantastic - but I'm working on making that update a live feed on the site automatically via the GPRS link... [/geek] - but we'll have to see how expensive that turns out to be :-)

m

Geek filter on
 

My fileserver and a workststion at home run on Linux.
So the Tomtom has a Linux OS underneath. Interesting!
That is an extra reason to choose the Tomtom.

I have found a good routeplanning program (unfortunately MS-Windows only) that generates Tomtom output so one of the dis-advantages of the Tomtom is gone.

The only problem that remains is the mounting hardware but maybe a Touratech mounting kit will help.

Thanks for all the information!

Cool... what's the route planning software? I'm yet to find any?

m

Onroute
 

The program is Onroute.
Unfortunately for most of you it's in Dutch.

The website is http://www.onroute.nl/
You can choose to make a "touristic" route or a quick route and it can export to Garmin, Tomtom, Google Earth (very nice to see your trip in advance) and various print formats.

blast! Cheers though... now where did I put that Dutch dictionary?

Dutch dictionary
 

http://babelfish.altavista.com/
choose "Dutch to English"

I don't know how correct the translation is but it is worth a try.

Maybe you can send an email to the makers of Onroute and ask for an English version.

That's great... cheers chaps...

m