I've just re-packaged up the TomTom Go 510 I bought this afternoon from a well-known high street retailer. The first thing I noticed when I got it home was that the seal on the memory card's container - which you have to break to use the TomTom - was already broken. Someone had already been there, and like finding one's toilet seat still warm when you go to use it, there's a certain associated feeling which isn't entirely nice. Of course, things just went downhill from there...
Starting up the TomTom, the last known location was just half a mile up the road from the shop I bought it from, and a route had already been planned to Southampton University. Very curious...
The fun really started when I connected it to the Macbook - first I found that just lightly touching the TomTom while it was in its dock cradle was enough to disconnect it from the computer, interrupting the USB connection. Of course, I only noticed this when my laptop told me a device hadn't been properly removed, and the TomTom software - which had already crashed twice before then - decided to crash again.
Not wanting to feel left out, when I connected my phone to the TomTom ('cos it you can use the TomTom as a hands free kit. Apparently...), my phone promptly decided to join in the party by crashing as well. TomTom: 2, The Consumer: nil.
Then, after connecting once to the laptop, the TomTom decided it wasn't going to play any more and stopped showing up when I plugged in its USB cable. Knowing Apple's notorious inability to explain a problem when it sees one, I tried plugging it into Windows, which gave me an error saying that "the device you have plugged in has malfunctioned or is faulty. If unplugging and plugging the device back in does not fix this problem, replace the device".
Oh, right then. The old "replace the device" message.
Bugger.
So, tomorrow morning it's off back to the shop. I haven't named them here because I want to give them a fair chance to correct this problem, and if they don't play nicely, I'll name and shame them. Oh happy days...
This has been an angry greyhead broadcast. Thanks for reading ;o)
