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While there are many technologies in the IT industry that receive a lot of hype there are very few that actually mean anything to the man in the street. The Global Positioning System (GPS) however, is one that could truly be said to have entered the mainstream. This is no doubt due to the fact that its benefits are readily apparent even to the non-technically minded. A car based GPS system ensures that you don’t have to worry about getting lost, which can really take the stress out of driving. It also removes the need to drive around with a map over the steering wheel, making driving a lot safer.

However, most factory-fitted systems just consist of a basic display, while after market satellite navigation units with large colour screen tend to be exorbitantly priced. Conversely, PDA based GPS systems have proved to be very popular due to being inexpensive and portable while performing just as well. With the Mio 168 we were even introduced to the concept of Pocket PCs with GPS receiver’s built-in. One of the biggest names in PDA based navigation is TomTom. Its popular Navigator software is now on its third iteration and the company stole a march on its competitors by being the first to introduce a virtual 3D view to its software. This experience has clearly paid off in its creation of the TomTom GO, which is an impressively polished product.

The TomTom GO makes no claims to being as flexible as a PDA. It’s a one trick pony and proud of it, which actually brings a number of advantages. For one, the GO lives up to its name and works as soon as you take it out the box. There’s no software installation to deal with, you don’t have to worry about application conflicts or fiddling with a Bluetooth connection. You also get a system that you can transfer easily between any car.

The TomTom GO comes in a neat square box that will be familiar to any iPod owner - clearly TomTom is going for the same type of market. When you take it out the appeal of the GO is obvious, even for a died-in-the-wool PDA fan. It’s very small and cute and weighs just 310 grams. With a smart grey body and silver bezel if this isn’t to your taste though, TomTom has promised a range of snap on covers with other colours to cater for different tastes and car decors – not an option you’ll get with a PDA.

The screen is a 3.5in colour TFT with a 320 x 240 resolution. It’s very bright and the intensity can be turned down if it’s too much. Unfortunately though, the glass screen lacks a reflective coating so can be very difficult to see in direct sunlight. A nice touch though is that at night the display can be switched to use colours that are far easier on the eye.

The GO is powered by a 200MHz processor and 32MB of RAM. This isn’t much by current PDA standards but it’s sufficient as the GO doesn’t have to perform non-GPS related tasks. Maps are stored on SD Cards, with the slot at the bottom front. On the left is the power switch with a clip to attach the mount in the centre. At the rear is a power connector for charging in-car through the mount, or directly with the supplied AC adaptor. The GO has an internal Lithium-ion battery that TomTom claims will last for around five hours, which proved about right in my tests. This is handy as it means that you don’t have to have the power cable trailing to the in-car power socket the whole time. Round the back you’ll find a mini USB port, which is used for hooking up to your PC to install downloadable software updates.

If you buy the TomTom GO in the UK you’ll find a full UK map preloaded onto the supplied 128MB SD card, while maps of the major roads of Western Europe are available on CD for around £130. These have to be transferred over to an SD card, which you’ll need to purchase separately.

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