Tuesday: Cycled to work. Sunny.

Wednesday: Cycled to work. Sunny.

Thursday: Drove to work with the roof down. Rain.

Friday: Cycled to work. Sunny.

I went in and asked "What’s with the paying before filling up?"

"Oh you can fill up first if you want."

Having decided that what I really wanted was a big screen, I hit eBay.

A guy had a few of the last batch of the old iMacs for sale, with the white casing before they switched to the brushed metal look. £900 cash on collection from Birmingham. Bargain.

Rebecca and I jumped in the car and hit the motorway. Two hours later we were there. The bloke wasn’t a weirdo and his house was right next to a carpark. Free parking for the win. He had the iMac all set up for me to inspect and it didn’t take long to confirm that it was kosher.

Then the fun started.

First Rebecca asked if she could use the guy’s bathroom. So far so usual after a two hour drive barely 20cm off the ground. Only she couldn’t get out of it. Turns out the handle on the door is pretty stiff and the door wouldn’t open. The result was that she had to call my mobile for assistance.

Then the iMac was too big to fit in the boot. "Why don’t you put it on the back seat?" quoth the guy. "Back seat? What’s that?" I replied. "Oh yeah. Two-seater."

The upshot of this was that Rebecca had to sit with the machine between her legs the whole way home. Hey, I moved house in that car. A single computer wasn’t going to be a problem.

It would seem sensible to revisit my initial criticisms of the unit. I mentioned that it was slow to acquire its position when first started. Sadly this would appear to be a feature of the device rather than an unfortunate coincidence. You can’t just jump in the car and drive off unless you know at least vaguely where you’re going. That’s fine if you’re setting off from home but would be annoying if you were pulling away from a hotel, shopping centre carpark, garage etc and came to the end of the road with no idea which way you should turn.

I was also unimpressed with the volume of the voices and warning tones. At this point I’ve practically given up on them. Unless I’m in an urban area with a 30mph limit there’s almost no way that I can hear what I’m being told to do. I found myself glancing periodically at the “Time to turn” marker on the right of the display, which counts down the distance to the next intersection. The nüvi is telling me that I need to turn after 300 yards but if I can’t hear it then I need to look for myself.

The alert that sounds when you approach a speed camera is also quiet, though the fact that it is high pitched and accompanied by a warning message on a bright red background does help to attract your attention.

Sticking with the subject of speed I complained that the nüvi didn’t show my current speed in the map view, as TomTom does. It turns out that your current speed is displayed … when you aren’t following a route. If you’re just driving around you can see your current speed. If you’re following a route, on the other hand, your ETA is shown instead. TomTom manages to fit both stats on to its display and that is a big plus point.

That said, the nüvi’s virtual dashboard, accessible by clicking the speed/ETA section of the screen, is a nifty feature. It hides the map, which is annoying but unavoidable as it does display a decent amount of data. Namely: direction of travel, current speed, distance to destination (if you’re following a route), distance travelled, total journey time, total moving time, total stopped time, overall average speed, moving average speed and maximum speed. The counters can be reset and … enthusiastic … drivers will want to do so after every journey.

While understandable, the inability to have the map and stats shown together is a sore point. Sadly, the UI just isn’t as nice to use as the TomTom’s, which either boasts features that the nüvi simply doesn’t have or implements them better. I mentioned before that it takes more taps on the screen to choose a destination with the nüvi. Once you’re on your way it takes longer to plan a deviation from your route.

TomTom allows you to "Avoid part of route" whereby you can see a list of all the roads along your journey and pick one to navigate around. Don’t fancy the M25 this morning? Pick a detour. In contract the nüvi only has a Detour button. Press it and you get diverted … somewhere. You have no way of knowing where you are being diverted to – and how soon, if at all, you will pick your original route back up – short of scrolling through the intersection list one turn at a time. TomTom’s route summary is available at any time, not just for planning diversions; the nüvi doesn’t have one at all.

The nüvi does make up for this a little with its FM traffic receiver. This works well, showing an alert symbol to indicate that it has updates to the traffic on one of the roads along your route. You click though to get a list of updates, choose the one you want and get more details and the option to avoid the route. I don’t know how good the higher spec TomToms are in this regard as my ONE didn’t have a traffic receiver. The Garmin is certainly good.

Another failing of the UI is the insistence on displaying popup messages that you have to click to dismiss. If you thought popup windows obscuring your view of a web browser were annoying, try having your view of your GPS obscured by a message telling you – in case you hadn’t noticed – that it is sunset and that the nighttime colour scheme has been activated. And then having to reach across to dismiss this message when you are trying to concentrate on driving. The nüvi will also interrupt you to tell you about speed cameras (if you are watching the dashboard) and incoming phone calls. I found them distracting, annoying and potentially dangerous.

The nüvi isn’t without its good points. The ability to select your vehicle, for instance, is nice. Switch it to Pedestrian mode and it will give you a fairly accurate ETA for walking pace. And because it’s small enough to carry around in your pocket this is a feature you can actually use rather than just a gimmick. The maps – one of my complaints against the TomTom – are good. I’ve yet to find myself on a road the Garmin didn’t know about. The display is clear and easy to read, even if it would benefit from zooming in when you approach a turning, as TomTom does.

It’s by no means a bad piece of kit. If I hadn’t used TomTom before I would probably be singing its praises. Unfortunately, although I actually quite like it as a device and will continue to use it, I can’t escape the conclusion that it is inferior to the TomTom in almost every way.

Besides the satnav itself there’s a fair amount of kit packed into the nüvi box. The obligatory cigarette lighter charger is accompanied by a mains charger (sporting both 2- and 3-pin connectors) , USB cable, FM traffic receiver and manuals in seven languages. The latter aren’t really needed; the nüvi’s setup menus are straightforward enough.

Having said that I did soon find myself missing the TomTom’s UI. Adding, editing and saving routes and locations feels clunky compared to the TomTom and it seems to take a few more taps on the touchscreen to get things done.

For example with the TomTom you can navigate to your home location by clicking the map to open the menu, clicking "Navigate To" at the top left and then "Home" at the top left. Three clicks including what can effectively be thought of as a double click. In comparison the Garmin requires you to click to open the menu, then hit "Where to?" at the top of the screen, "My Locations" at the bottom left and finally "Go Home" at the top. It’s one extra press on the touchscreen and your finger has to jump up and down to do it.

After having admired the unit and been impressed with the various paraphenalia that came with it, I suddenly felt somewhat underwhelmed. Not only was plotting routes more cumbersome than with the TomTom, as soon as I did get out on the road I saw to my dismay that the nüvi had no idea at all where I was. It sat in "Acquiring satellites" mode for several minutes. Luckily I knew where I was going and after it warmed up and acquired a signal I had no further issues on the journey.

A few minutes later I approached the first turning and the nüvi correctly informed me that I should turn left. It even told me the name of the road to take, thanks to its Text To Speech software. Unfortunately the TTS voice sounded synthetic and absolutely horrible. I immediately switched to a non-TTS voice in the hope it would sound better. While the regular voice was an improvement I found it vastly inferior to the stock TomTom voices. It also seemed that the nüvi’s vocabulary was limited compared to the TomTom’s. At one point I found myself leaving the motorway and approaching a roundabout, at which I needed to turn right, in the lefthand (ie wrong) lane because it wasn’t until I looked at the screen that I saw the turning. The TomTom would have told me "take the exit then after 100 yards turn right at the roundabout, fourth exit" but the nüvi was much less verbose. Worse, it was very quiet. Even at maximum volume I could barely make out what it was saying when I drove at 50mph or faster. Voice quality scores a big win for the TomTom.

The rest of my journey passed uneventfully. I arrived without getting lost, without being told to take an exit I was already on, without being told to take a turning I’d passed and more or less on time. My only other observation on this first journey was that the nüvi doesn’t display your speed on the map view. You can press the bottom left of the screen to access a display showing current, maximum and average speed and various other stats (but no view of the map) but there is no such indication on the map view itself. By contrast the TomTom tells you your speed and, if it knows it, the current speed limit directly underneath the map.

I’ll make some more observations when I have some more journeys under my belt. It will be interesting to see if the quality of the maps and the speed of the GPS live up to my expectations. They’ll need to if I am to convince myself I was better off with the Garmin than a new TomTom ONE Europe.

The TomTom was a very good piece of kit. It was intuitive and easy to use yet boasted a number of cool advanced features such as plotting itineraries with multiple stops and planning routes from A to B via C even if you were operating the unit at D.

It did however have a number of niggling problems. The GPS receiver seemed to take forever to update, leading to common situations where I would be advised to take an exit I was already negotiating, and the Teleatlas maps were, to be frank, rubbish. You can forgive a brand new road not being recognised. When you’re travelling down a straight road that’s been open for several years and the satnav is telling you that you’re in a field and should take the next left, it gets a little frustrating.

I decided that the Garmin unit, which had received favourable reviews, couldn’t be worse. Although the TomTom is a nice product, if I’m cursing it every time I use it then a change is definitely on the cards. Especially if I’ve just incinerated the thing.

It isn’t fair to make a direct comparison between my old TomTom ONE and the nüvi 360T as the the comparison is not like-for-like. The 360T is more comparable to a TomTom Go 510, offering a hands-free mobile phone kit, an integrated FM traffic receiver and various other goodies. It also comes with maps from Navteq and carries full European coverage. My TomTom only covered the UK whereas the more expensive TomTom ONE Europe also boasts European maps from Navteq.

Keeping these differences in mind, I set out to see how the nüvi stacked up against the TomTom. For these posts I’ll be assuming that the reader has some familiarity with at least one of the products.

I thought I knew. I knew that they were worthless. I knew that several times while driving at night I have had to physically check that the buttons were presesd and that the lights were, in fact, on. I strongly suspected that there’s some hidden circuitry which detects when the car is in front of a wall, another vehicle or something else that the lights should reflect off. In this case the circuitry activates the lights. On the open road, however, it switches them off.

The thing is you’d never know because they’re so worthless that you can’t see the beams on the road at all.

I thought, dear reader, that I was fully acquainted with the inadequacies of my headlights.

But I was wrong.

As I will be driving to work next week, and starting off early in the morning when it will be dark, I decided I should take some steps to improve the headlights. Thus I bought some "extra bright" Xenon bulbs from Halfords.

Fitting the bulbs is, as you would expect, a hassle. You have to get down in the wheelarch, unscrew a mudguard, pull out a grommet, unclip a retention mechanism and slide out the bulb. This I did. In the wet. Lying on a towel so I didn’t get my clothes ruined.

And when I’d done it I found that the bulb I’d just pulled out was the exact same model as the replacement I’d bought.

Only now do I appreciate the full worthlessness of the headlights. I already knew they were bad. Now I know they don’t get any better.

I’ll have to splash out on a HID kit (and installation). I can’t afford it but I’m going to have to.

In their earlier days my parents owned an MGB when it was the latest and greatest thing so I was sure they’d understand my decision to buy a light and nimble sports car for the sole purpose of enjoying driving. When you’re 17 years old driving is cool because it’s what adults do and it’s fun. Then you drive to work every day for a few years and it becomes a necessary evil. I’ve always lived within walking or public transport distance of my work and never owned my own car. I wanted something that would remind me of how I used to enjoy driving rather than let me in on what everyone else feels about their daily commute. Hence the Elise.

I took them both for a drive around the same route. Some fast corners, a few slow villages high streets and some fun twisty bits. My father drew the short straw as we got stuck behind a few sheds on his run whereas my mother saw the road mostly clear of traffic and we managed to get up to speed. They both asked more or less the same questions along the way. Why that car? Is it fun? How much was the insurance? The technical specs. My father couldn’t believe it only has a 1.8l engine and puts out 118bhp. That power goes a long way in a small, light car.

Surprisingly, they both turned down the invitation to get behind the wheel although my father really had to force himself to say no and he did note that swapping seats might make it easier for him to exit the vehicle once we arrived back home. He has arthritis in his left leg so manoeuvring himself into the passenger side was a struggle. In contrast my mother surprised me when, despite her protestations of it being too low and impossible to enter, she was in and out without too much bother.

We all had a splendid time and, as I knew they would, my parents absolutely understood my motivation for buying such a lovely car.