Jennifer Saranow, a staff reporter for Wall Street Journal, recently wrote an article about car navigation devices titled, “Bargains for the Directionally Challenged.”  Her commentary includes recent category growth of personal navigation systems and promotes TomTom GO as one of the devices to look out for this holiday season.  Below are a few quotes from the article:

“Among other manufacturers offering promotions, TomTom is offering customers $50 off the $700 GO 300 model and off the $900 GO 700 models through Dec. 31, its second mail-in rebate for such devices in the U.S.”

“Both of the TomTom GO products were introduced in March. The more advanced 700 can speak in languages from Croatian to Russian, comes with a hard drive that can store more maps and also works as a hands-free kit for compatible Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones, among other features.”

The full article can be viewed at Wall Street Journal Online with a registered account.

Popularity: 87% [?]

All TomTom GO units come pre-installed with millions of Points of Interest (POIs) but why limit yourself to just those?  There are many other POIs that can be added and the list keeps growing as TomTom and other online communities update their POI databases.  If you are interested in broadening your POI database, follow the instructions below. 

Be advised, POIs use memory on the unit’s SD card or hard drive, so make sure you have enough space to properly install the POI set.  In addition, it is recommended that you make a backup of all the files on your TomTom prior to any custom installations.

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Popularity: 32% [?]

You can now customize your TomTom GO with a personal picture that displays on start-up and shutdown! This is easily accomplished using your PC and the included USB cable. To change the TomTom splash screen follow the instructions below:

1. Select the image or photograph you want to have displayed on your TomTom GO
2. Open an image editing program (Paint, Microsoft Office Picture Manager, etc.)and rotate the selected image 90 degrees clockwise
3. Re-size the image to 320 pixels high x 240 pixels wide. (For TomTom Navigator the image needs to be resized to 320 pixels HIGH and 240 pixels WIDE.)
4. Save the image as a 24-bit Bitmap file named “splash.bmp”
5. Plug Your TomTom GO into your computer via the USB cable
6. Open your TomTom GO “hard drive” within My Computer
7. Locate the original splash file which is called “splash.bmp” and rename it to “splash1.bmp” (this naming allows you keep the original TomTom splash screen)
8. Copy your image (splash.bmp) from your computer to the same TomTom GO directory
9. Disconnect and boot up your TomTom GO.  Your personalized picture should be there to greet you when you turn it on or off!

Popularity: 55% [?]

This week we unveiled the company’s first integrated U.S. advertising campaign. Over the coming months we will be targeting our core consumers via television, radio, print, and online ads. We’re reaching out to potential TomTom customers with commercials surrounding network TV and national cable programs on ESPN, Spike TV, Discovery channel and more.

But why wait to check out our new campaign? You can preview our three new television spots right here at Club TomTom. Feel free to take a peek at them and then, using the “Poll feature” in the right-hand column, let us know which is your favorite. We’d also love to hear your feedback and reactions to the ads, so go ahead and submit a comment to this post or email us at asktomtom@clubtomtom.com.

DougDoug commercial (4MB)

SueSue commercial (4MB)

ScottScott commercial (4MB)

Popularity: 26% [?]