Hiring sat-nav systems for cars

Lost99

I'm going on holiday to France in a couple of weeks. Does anyone know if or where you can hire a sat-nav system for a short period of time without it costing the earth?

BrianD

No, how about a second hand road map?

Lost99

Found a place - www.satnavhire.ie - just in time too - I'm going tomorrow!

Lost99

Back from France and for what it's worth here is a update on my experience with sat nav.

To put things in context - I have a young family, okay car and travelled 2000kms+ over 12 days and I like gadgets.

This was my first time using a gps system and as far as I am concerned they beat maps hands over fist - no doubts and I'll never drive abroad without one again.

The driving was amazingly hassle free - you always knew what was ahead of you, we hardly ever had to look at signposts or worst still having to slow down to 20kmph at every junction to read the signs. It was just like driving on roads that you were already familiar with. My kids also got into it and didn't badger us too much on the journeys. A happy wife, happy kids - a scene of peaceful serenity was our car.

One of the really neat things about the gsp device was that if you stopped over at some town, took a detour intentionally or otherwise the system would automatically work out a new route to your destination - in other words you didn't have to back track or do u-turns.

Occasionally - maybe 2 or 3 times over the 12 days - the voice instructions from the gps device were misleading or misinterpreted on my part but you did always get to where you wanted to go.

The gps device itself was pretty easy to use. Before I left for France I spent a couple of hours playing around with it and that definitely helped. I entered the places that we wanted to go to such as our campsite, villages, tourist attractions and so on. The company I hired the device from, www.satnavhire.ie, also added locations of carrefour supermarkets for the essential wine purchases.

Now, the cost - and I can see that this would put some people off. For 15 days I paid e164.10 - the gps device was 9.69 per day and an external gps aerial was 1.25 per day. As it turned out I didn't need the external aerial but I hired it just in case. e164.10 might seem alot but I spent nearly e200 for car travel/personal insurance with the AA before the trip and that's just for peace of mind. The gps device that I used cost about e1,200 new and there is no way I'd ever go and buy one so hiring did make sense - in 5 years they will probably be standard in cars anyway and I reckon I'd only need one once or twice every 2 to 3 years.

Anyway, my tuppence worth - if you're driving abroad it is definitely worth checking out sat nav systems.

drdre

yeah sat navs will become standard in cars and they are really useful but i would buy a cheap one if u go on holidays alot.

hope u had a nice trip abroad