Just looking for GPS software that'll speak the directions to me

[santod]

Originally Posted by TomTom Support

Dear ^%$#@*&%%,

Thank you for responding. We are happy to answer your questions.

Navigator 7 does not support the text-to-speech feature that can be found on most of our all-in-one devices. We apologize for the confusion with our earlier statements. Computer voices will not function while using this software.

If you have any further questions or comments, please email or call us at 866-486-6866 Monday through Friday, 8:30 AM until 7:00 PM EST. Thanks again for writing. At TomTom we believe in showing you the way the easy way.

With Best Regards,

Patrick

The TomTom Customer Support Team

[jmorton10]

One thing that confuses people, you don't NEED TTS to have spoken turn by turn directions.

The difference betweeen say GarminXT & CoPilot 7 which don't have TTS & igo that does is this: igo will say for instance " turn left onto Elmwood Avenue" where Garmin would say "make the next left in 200' " I have systems that do it both ways & I do NOT consider TTS something that's really necessary.

GarminXT is BY FAR my favorite PPC NAV program & it does not have TTS.

~John

[jmorton10]

Originally Posted by demonlordoftheround

AmazeGPS does turn by turn. Search Google for the site.

See, this is what I'm talking about.

aMaze does turn by turn, but it most definitely does NOT have TTS.....

~John

[demonlordoftheround]

Originally Posted by jmorton10

See, this is what I'm talking about.

aMaze does turn by turn, but it most definitely does NOT have TTS.....

~John

That has already been established.

[BustedNuts1]

Thank you

Originally Posted by jmorton10

One thing that confuses people, you don't NEED TTS to have spoken turn by turn directions.

The difference betweeen say GarminXT & CoPilot 7 which don't have TTS & igo that does is this: igo will say for instance " turn left onto Elmwood Avenue" where Garmin would say "make the next left in 200' " I have systems that do it both ways & I do NOT consider TTS something that's really necessary.

GarminXT is BY FAR my favorite PPC NAV program & it does not have TTS.

~John

That was the kind of answer I was looking for. I think people got off topic from my original question, or maybe I didn't phrase it right. All I wanted was something that says "turn left here." I don't care if it told me the name of the street.

Originally Posted by BustedNuts1

Does TTS mean it'll say stuff like "turn left at the next exit"?

So the answer is no, right? TTS does NOT mean it will say "turn left here." TTS means it will say "turn left on elmwood" right? Which is what I don't care about it all. I think I'm gonna give garmin or tomtom a try since now I believe they actually do what I want.

I wanted spoken turn by turn, not TTS, and from what I'm getting from your post jmorton, most all do that at least.

Thank you jmorton.

[robotphood]

Ah, sorry for the confusion BustedNuts1. I did not catch when you said "next exit". Just TTS and the replies after. jmorton is right.

TTS = turn by turn with street names/highways/freeways/etc

I definitely need TTS, LA/socal has too many streets and freeways! Plus, the Diamond screen is a bit small for me to glance at all the time. As for the navi software, I personally prefer iGO8/TT7 over Garmin XT. They all pretty much have the same features (with a few extras inbetween) but:

Garmin didn't draw the maps as fast for me. Also the navigation wasn't as precise/clear. IE; Before a fork in the freeway it would tell me to stay on the right lane but it didn't mean to take the right ramp but rather stay on the right lane of the left ramp because there were 2 lanes and one led to carpool (marked as avoid). Little things like that didn't happen in TT or iGO. However, it did have the best POI searching of the 3. I think it even has integrated google search now (I used an early version)?

TT7 is clean, fast and precise. I really like everything about it. POI selection is lackluster though (worst of 3).

iGO8, tons of skins available (even cars to replace the cursor!). Very customizable. Fast and precise. Similar interface to TT. Stock interface can be a little cluttered but you can always change it up with skins (TT also has them I believe but I never used them). One downside to iGO is that it requires a decent amount of memory to run it because of TTS (especially the high quality voices) and the 3D buildings. It also takes quite long to load up, around 25-30 seconds!

Hope that helps a bit. Keep in mind there are a lot of features I don't even touch on these programs. I mainly use them to navigate and search points of interest. Nowadays I usually just launch up google maps or live search for local searching because it's faster.

[BustedNuts1]

Thank you robotphood! for such a great response.

Yeah, I'm a simpleton, just need my gps to say "turn left here" so TTS isn't necesarrily for me. That's why I was getting confused with all these because I thought spoken directions (just the turn left/right not street names) was a necessity for GPS nav software. Would be pretty worthless otherwise.

Ok, so from what I've read TomTom seems to be the leader in terms of accuracy and smoothness. But Garmin is hands down the leader in POI (google search is now integrated), which is a super nice feature. igo8, which I think goes by the name oncourse navigator now for NA, seems to be pretty feature rich, but pretty ram heavy.

When you said it takes like 25-30 seconds to load, what did you mean? Did the screen just sit there with nothing happening?

Anyways, thank you guys for answering my question. I think all, or at least tomtom, garmin, and igo (which are the ones I'm the most interested in), all give spoken directions.

[robotphood]

No after the startup/splash screen shows it starts loading a bunch of things (shows on the bottom right corner).

[schollianmj]

I have Tom Tom 7 installed on my verizon touch pro. it speaks the directions. aloud. i plug it into my car stereo via my aux in port and it speaks the directions LOUDLY through the cars 6 speakers and 2 subwoofers. Dont know why their email response said it dosent, but it does.

[santod]

Just to clarify what was stated already, in another post in this thread:

TTS (text to speech) and voice enabled turn by turn are two similar but different features.

TTS = turn by turn with street names/highways/freeways/etc

Voice enabled turn by turn "without street names",
is what Tom Tom supports. It tells you to turn right after so many yards or feet or whatever. TTS would tell you the street name as well.

To Summarize:
Nowadays, any in-car GPS device can give you voice-guided directions, but there's a new enhancement to this feature that's starting to show up in the latest systems: text-to-speech functionality. This enables the GPS unit to speak specific street names, rather than generic directions. For example, it will say, "Turn right on Main Street," rather than "Turn right in 100 feet."